‘Deaths at Sarfabad no mystery’

NOIDA: The Noida health department on Friday claimed eight people had died in the last 15 days in Sarfabad village near Sector 73. Six of these deaths, it said,

NOIDA: The Noida health department on Friday claimed eight people had died in the last 15 days in Sarfabad village near Sector 73. Six of these deaths, it said, were due to various ailments and not any ‘mysterious fever’.

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Residents of Sarfabad, however, have a different story. They claimed more than 14 people had died in their village in the past fortnight or so. Apart from that, dozens others had fallen sick in the past one week.

“Fourteen people have died in the last two-and-a-half-months in Sarfabad village due to different reasons, such as hepatitis, heart attack, liver failure, cancer and other diseases,” said Vijay Deepak Verma, chief medical officer, health department, Gautam Budh Nagar.

“Of the eight people who died in the last 15 days, six succumbed to complications like chronic obstructive pulmonary disease with pancreatitis, cardiac arrest, paralytic attack, epileptic attack and tongue cancer. The other two people who died had high fever,” Verma said.

Verma said details of the two people who had fever would come by Saturday as these patients had died at home and not in a hospital.

“Their relatives claim that they had high fever for a day. A day’s fever does not cause death. We will examine these cases,” Verma said.

The district administration said that they were doing everything they could to help the villagers, a claim rejected by local residents.

“Garbage, clogged sewage lines and overflowing drains are very big concerns. Until media reported our condition, no officials or politicians had visited our village. Mosquitoes breed anywhere in our locality and the response of the administration has been terrible,” said Monu Yadav, a resident of Sarfabad.

The district administration ordered a probe in the incident, with the health department setting up a temporary health camp in the village on Thursday. A total of 816 villagers registered themselves in the health camp in the past two days, complaining of fever, body pain and rashes.

“A total of 311 residents registered themselves on Thursday and 505 residents on Friday,” said a medical staff at the health camp.

Prodded about the nature of disease that they had witnessed so far, camp in-charge Dr Chandan said that it was the season of viral fever and patients streaming in complained of symptoms that resembled viral infections.