An 18-year-old resident of Tardeo has become the second person to die of dengue this month, taking the city’s death toll to six this year. The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) on Wednesday said there has also been a near four-fold increase in malaria cases over the last one week.
Public and private hospitals continue to be swarmed by dengue admissions. The bed occupancy in municipal hospitals continues to be more than 98%. The situation is similar in private hospitals, where patients are being hospitalized for rapidly depleting platelet levels. Nearly 1,100 people were admitted to municipal hospitals alone for treatment of dengue-like symptoms.
The boy from Tardeo, who passed away on October 11, did not have underlying ailments. He was down with fever and chills for seven days before he got admitted to the civic-run BYL Nair Hospital on October 8. The boy had internal bleeding by the time he was hospitalized. A civic official said the patient was suffering from dengue hemorrhagic fever and had gone into shock along with acute respiratory distress syndrome. His liver too was badly injured due to the viral infection.
Intensivist Dr Khushrav Bhajan, who consults with PD Hinduja Hospital in Mahim, said early intervention is the key to successfully treat dengue patients. “It is important to monitor the count of white blood cells (WBCs) and not just platelets. Once WBCs drop, the patient’s immunity tends to take a beating and he/she gets prone to secondary infection,” he said. He added that patients are also coming with a co-infection of H1N1 infection along with dengue. Bhajan added that he has been admitting up to three dengue cases every day.
BMC’s epidemiologist Dr Minnie Khetrapal added that patients should not delay seeing a doctor and regularly follow up with a doctor if they test positive. At the state level, over 2,515 cases and 16 deaths have been reported this year. An official said the positivity rate has been around 11% of the 22,327 samples tested for dengue.
Doctors say malaria cases are also increasing but the severity is not much. From 65 positive cases in the first week of October it has jumped to 232. Even fever cases have shown a spurt. Luckily for the city, H1N1 cases have been declining. In October, 22 people have tested positive.