Municipalities to take dengue data from private hospitals too

NEW DELHI: The municipal corporations will include data from private hospitals in managing dengue cases this year.

NEW DELHI: The municipal corporations will include data from private hospitals in managing dengue cases this year.

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Till last year, the civic bodies used to consider cases from government hospitals only while collating data of dengue cases, which led a massive mismatch in the claims and situation on the ground.

Private hospitals get as many dengue cases as the government hospitals, if not more.

Officials of the municipal corporations said the move will help them devised far more comprehensive policies to combat the vector-borne disease.

Last year, the capital witnessed its worst dengue outbreak in the past 20 years. The city saw 60 deaths and 15,867 cases in 2015.

According to the official website of the National Vector Borne Disease Control Programme, such a massive outbreak was last seen in 1996 when about 10,252 cases and 423 deaths were reported.

Municipal officials said that while it was mandatory for every hospital to report dengue cases, the different methods used to diagnose the disease led to confusion as to how many people are affected.

The civic bodies depend on Elisa test for diagnosis of dengue but most private hospitals rely on the Rapid Diagnostic Kits.

“The Elisa test has been recommended by the Union government. However, owing to the RDKs being cheaper the private hospitals largely rely on them, although its results are not considered by the municipal corporation,” said senior municipal official.

The corporation officials said that they are now planning to send notices to the private hospitals asking them to send all dengue data to the municipal corporations.

“The hospitals will have to send all the data to us and we hope that it will help us form better policies and improve the anti-dengue drives. Also, it will give us the exact idea of the size of the problem,” said Jitender Choudhary, standing committee chairman, East Delhi Municipal Corporation.