Dengue count crosses 100 in Gurgaon, no death confirmed

After confirmation of 10 more dengue cases by the district health department on Wednesday, the official count of the vector-borne disease rose to 102 in the district.

After confirmation of 10 more dengue cases by the district health department on Wednesday, the official count of the vector-borne disease rose to 102 in the district.

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Though the district health department has not confirmed any dengue deaths, there is a discrepancy in the number of dengue cases and deaths reported by private hospitals and those registered by the health department.

According to the doctors at Artemis hospital, a man succumbed to dengue here three weeks ago. The patient was a resident of DLF City. He came to the hospital with dengue haemorrhagic fever, one of the last stages of the vector-borne disease, doctors said.

In this stage, the victim goes into a shock and tends to bleed to death. Another man also died at the Gurgaon Civil hospital around the same time. "He projected signs of dengue, one of them being high-grade fever. But we could not test his sample as he died within half an hour of admission," said an official at the dengue-malaria department of the health department.

Commenting on the confusion over death figures, the district civil surgeon, Pushpa Bishnoi, said, "At private hospitals, the dengue samples are tested using a rapid test method, which, at times, wrongly declares the sample to be positive. Only samples that are tested positive under the confirmatory test at the Civil hospital are considered positive. So far, not a single death has occurred in the district."

Meanwhile, the malaria count also reached 153 in the district on Tuesday.

As Gurgaon - referred to as the state's dengue-malaria capital last year- witnesses an increase in the number of vector-borne diseases, the deputy director for dengue and malaria is likely to visit the city on Thursday. "It is a routine visit by the official. He will be visiting all the affected areas," said Bishnoi.

Last year, a team from Panchkula had visited Gurgaon to examine the 'epidemic-like' situation. The department had registered 469 cases with one death. The team had even listed posh residential localities of DLF City Phase 3, South City 1, Sushant Lok 1, Sector 15 and Palam Vihar among others as the dengue hotspots.