Delhi: Dengue deaths likely to go up as 9 cases still pending panel review

So far, Delhi has declared six confirmed dengue deaths — the highest since 2017 when the disease claimed 10 lives. Of these, five were declared on Monday (November 1), the weekly report released by the city’s municipal authorities showed.

The dengue death toll in the national capital is likely to go up further as nine cases of suspected dengue deaths, of Delhi residents, are still pending investigation before the death audit committee, a senior municipal public health official said on Wednesday.

Delhi reported 531 new cases of dengue during the week ending October 30, taking the Capital’s dengue tally to 1,537 this year.

So far, Delhi has declared six confirmed dengue deaths — the highest since 2017 when the disease claimed 10 lives. Of these, five were declared on Monday (November 1), the weekly report released by the city’s municipal authorities showed.

Delhi reported 531 new cases of dengue during the week ending October 30, taking the Capital’s dengue tally to 1,537 this year. Of these, 1,196 cases were reported in October, while 531 were registered in the last week alone, the weekly report further showed.

A senior official, who is part of the audit panel, said the committee has to analyse nine cases of suspected dengue deaths of Delhi residents, and 10 of those who had arrived in Delhi from neighbouring states. Once a dengue or malaria related death is reported by a hospital, the nine-member committee audits all case documents to ascertain whether it was the vector borne infection that caused the death, and also to find out if the origin of the disease was Delhi.

“The committee will take a look at other aspects such as co-morbidities before attributing the deaths to vector borne diseases. For example, if a patient is severely ill due to other conditions and the main cause of death is not dengue, then the death is not attributed to the mosquito-borne disease. The number of dengue deaths is likely to go up as several such cases have been sent to the committee,” the municipal official said, on condition of anonymity.

There was only one dengue death in Delhi last year, two in 2019 and four in 2018, according to official data. In 2015, a major dengue outbreak had killed 60 people.

With the rise in dengue cases and higher number of deaths, the leader of the house in the South Delhi Municipal Corporation (SDMC) Inderjeet Sehrawat said special focus is now being given to areas with a high number of cases.

“A three-day long fogging and anti-mosquito drive is being undertaken in every neighbourhood that has a high incidence of dengue/malaria cases,” Sehrawat said.

Apart from Delhi’s tally of 1,537 so far, there are another 1,257 dengue cases, wherein the infection was acquired from other states. Some of these patients have their addresses missing, according to the weekly report issued by the three municipal corporations on Monday.

“A large number of dengue patients from western Uttar Pradesh (UP) districts are coming in Delhi for treatment,” the official quoted above said.

East Delhi Municipal Corporation (EDMC) mayor Shyam Sunder Aggarwal said intensive fogging and larvicide spraying drives are being carried out in hot spots where there is a high incidence of dengue cases. “A separate ward with 160 beds has been set up in Swami Dayanand hospital to treat dengue patients as we are getting a large number of cases from western UP,” he said.

EDMC has identified 16 hot spots and they include Maujpur, Dharampura, Nand Nagri, West Karawal Nagar and Timarpur, among others.

The SDMC has prepared a list of 27 such vulnerable hot spots. Under the Najafgarh zone, the vulnerable spots include Palam Village, Dwarka’s Sector 23 and 12, Raj Nagar, Rangpuri Pahari, and Mahipalpur village; in the south zone, the hot spots include Gautam Nagar, Hauz Rani, Malviya Nagar, Dakhsinpuri, Sangam Vihar and Pushpa Vihar.

“Under the west zone, the hot spots identified by the SDMC are Uttam Nagar (Jiwan Park, Pankha Road and Mohan Garden), Mahavir Enclave, R-Block Raghubir Nagar, Madipur JJ colony and AB block Janakpuri,” a public health official from the civic body said, not wishing to be named. The hot spots under the central zone include Jaitpur, Ali Vihar, parts of Badarpur, Govindpuri and Tughlaqabad extension, the official said.