Govt gears up to contain dengue

NEW DELHI: Mohd Tamannay, 18, from Tughlaqabad woke up with a high fever last week. When the fever didn’t abate, his worried parents took him to a neighbourhood physician.

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“The doctor recommended we take Tamannay immediately to Safdarjung,” said his father Mohd Islam, who is a tailor.

Tamannay is being treated for dengue but due to lack of a bed he sleeps on the floor. “He has dengue but is getting better and his platelets are increasing,” said Islam. Tamannay’s platelet count was 20,000 when he was admitted to Safdarjung on Thursday. The normal range is 150,000-450,000.

The municipal corporations of Delhi registered 29 new cases of dengue in the week ending July 30, taking the total number of cases to 119. This is more than twice the number of cases confirmed during Delhi’s worstever dengue outbreak in 2015, which affected 16,000 people and killed 60.

Delhi health minister Satyendra Jain urged people not to panic and insist on hospital admission as it burdens the health system.

“There is no shortage of hospital beds in Delhi. A maximum of 5% of dengue patients need to be admitted to the hospital .The rest can be treated in OPDs,” said Jain.

“Last year, we admitted 1.2 lakh–1.5 lakh people with fever in Delhi government hospitals during the dengue season but only 5,000– 7,000 had dengue. We admitted 20 times the number of patients because of panic,” said Jain.

Work to prevent dengue started earlier this year with the Delhi government setting up a Special Dengue-control Cell in May to work closely with the civic bodies on breeding-control and raising awareness.

The cell used data to identify the population and places in Delhi which are at risk of dengue. “Nearly 65% of the people affected by dengue last year were between 15-45 years,” said Dr SM Raheja, in-charge of the dengue control cell.

“These are people who step out of their homes to go to schools, colleges or work. The data has also been used to map the hotspots. Breeding control measures were intensified in these areas,” Raheja said.

Delhi Medical Association is helping the state government to run awareness campaigns in 200 schools. The students were being taught how to prevent the mosquito-borne disease and asked to pass on the information to their neighbours.

Schools such as Presidium and Springdales have issued advisory to their students on dengue and other water-borne diseases.

“We have sent SMS alerts and uploaded directions on the parents portal to send their wards properly covered. As special task force has been set up to clean the school,” said GS Matharoo, CEO Presidium schools.

Springdales School, Pusa Road, has asked junior students to wear pants and full sleeves shirt.

“These are bad times because of the rain. It is not only mosquitoes but we also need to protect children from other insects. This will continue till October so we have to keep the children protected,” said Ameeta Mulla Wattal, principal of the school.

Instead of only checking buildings for mosquito breeding, the MCD has come up with innovative and eco-friendly solutions to prevent the disease, such as “dengue-free coolers”.

“These coolers have a mosquito net above the water container that prevents mosquitoes from coming in contact with the water. The net can be made by a local cooler shop and costs around Rs 20-30,” an official said.

The corporation is also in the process of testing the effectiveness of the herbal extract of Agave Americana as a larvaecide. “Lab studies have found it to be extremely effective in killing larvae between 1 to 6 hours without polluting the water,” the official said.

As part of a pilot project, the MCDis using this extract instead of larvaecide, temiphos granules, in several neighbourhoods to check its efficacy.

“We have allowed private hospitals to increase their bed strength by 10-20%, this will add at least 1,000-1,500 beds,” said Jain. The government has also restricted the sale of blood-thinning drugs like aspirin, ibuprofen and diclofenac till October.

While the price for NSI Ag and Elisa MAC tests – required for detecting dengue – has been capped at Rs 600, a platelet count test will cost Rs 50 at all hospitals and laboratories.