Five dengue deaths this year in Delhi, says MCD report

The five fatalities this year are fewer than the 23 last year, but higher than the counts in 2020 (1), 2019 (2) and 2018 (4).

Delhi has recorded five dengue deaths since September this year, showed data from the city’s municipal corporation, as it confirmed fatalities of the infection in the Capital for the first time this year.

The last confirmed dengue fatality of the year was on November 7, when a 36-year-old woman from east Delhi’s Subhash Mohalla died of the illness (HT Photo)

Till December 16 this year (the last date for which data is available), Delhi clocked 4,114 dengue cases, fewer than 9,613 infections it clocked till the end of the year in 2021, but the second highest since 2018, according to data from the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD).

The five fatalities this year are fewer than the 23 last year, but higher than the counts in 2020 (1), 2019 (2) and 2018 (4). The city saw 10 deaths of the infection each in 2017 and 2016. In 2015, Delhi recorded 60 deaths of the infection, the most in a year by some distance, when the city endured its worst-ever dengue outbreak, which left 15,652 people infected.

Of the deaths this year, three were minors, showed data from the civic body.

The victims included a 39-year-old man from Mukherjee Nagar who died on September 9. Three more deaths came in October, as a seven-year-old girl from south-west Delhi’s Vijay Enclave, a 17-year-old girl from Kair Village, also in southwest Delhi and another 17-year-old girl from west Delhi’s East Punjabi Bagh succumbed to the infection.

The last confirmed fatality of the year was on November 7, when a 36-year-old woman from east Delhi’s Subhash Mohalla died of the illness.

The deaths were reported late because of an extensive confirmation and reconciliation system, said officials involved in the process.

To be sure, not all dengue patients who pass away in Delhi’s health care facilities are counted in the city’s official death toll.

A senior municipal official associated with the process of reconciling and categorising dengue deaths said that all fatalities of the vector-borne disease are examined by a review panel.

“Hospitals send the civic body the details of these deaths. The committee then analyses suspected dengue deaths of Delhi residents as well as people who came to Delhi from neighbouring states for treatment. Once a dengue or malaria related death is reported by a hospital, the committee audits all case documents to ascertain if the vector-borne infection was the cause of the death, and to find out if the victim contracted it in Delhi.

“The committee also looks 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,” said the municipal official, asking not to be named.

This year, 37 dengue deaths were reported to the committee, which comprises public health experts, a physician, a paediatrician and a microbiologist.

“Of these cases, only five have been confirmed to have been caused by dengue. Others had comorbidities like chronic liver diseases, kidney, cardiac, diabetes and other chronic illnesses that led to death among dengue infected patients,” said a senior MCD official.

Dr Sumit Ray, head of the department of critical care at Holy Family Hospital in Okhla, said patients who have been infected with dengue earlier are more vulnerable. “There are four serotypes of dengue and a patient who has recovered from one of these strains can still get infected by another. A past dengue infection does not give the patient any immunity. People who are immuno-compromised and have comorbidities are also vulnerable,” he said.