Dengue, the painful and debilitating mosquito-borne disease, has once again started spreading panic in the districts with many suspected cases of the dreaded disease being reported.
Dengue, which claimed several lives in 2009, has assumed alarming proportions this year in various parts of the district. Almost all the hospitals are being flooded with patients. There has been a spurt in dengue cases in Korutla, Dharmapuri, the Godavarikhani coal belt area and Karimnagar town. Panic-stricken patients are rushing to corporate hospitals in Hyderabad for better treatment. However, district medical and health officials argue that there were only three positive cases -- in Ibrahimpatnam, Boinpalli and Jammikunta mandals. “We have collected blood smears of 1.1 lakh persons in the district and found that there is not a single dengue positive case. Positive diagnosis has been made in respect of only 75 malaria and 13 filaria cases,” said DM&HO Komaram Balu.
Speaking to The Hindu , Dr. Balu maintained that there were no deaths due to dengue or vector-borne diseases in the district. He said that private hospitals were creating panic by conducting IGM anti-body tests and reporting them as dengue positive cases. No private hospital is conducting Elisa test to confirm the fever as dengue, he claimed.
The department was serving notices on all private hospitals and nursing homes about the treatment provided to dengue patients and would submit a report to the Collector to take further action against the errant doctors. However, a majority of physicians said the government as a policy was denying the facts on dengue fever cases. “We are confirming dengue by conducting NSI antigen tests. We are not creating any panic as alleged by the Medical Department. The patients are understandably concerned as the outbreak of 2009 is still fresh in their minds,” they maintained.
Viral fevers and malaria are rampant in the Agency areas of the district and the MGM Hospital and private hospitals are witnessing heavy rush of patients. Resident Medical Officer of Rohini Hospitals Dr. K. Narayana Reddy said many patients got themselves admitted in their hospital with symptoms such as reduced blood platelet count. It could be either malaria or dengue, he added.
Symptoms associated with dengue like reduction of blood platelets and bleeding would be there even in viral and malarial fevers making correct diagnosis difficult, observed chairman of Sri Krishna Hospitals Maganti Seshu Madhav.
“A rapid check is being done with the help of a kit which sometimes gives a false positive,” he said adding that only those who test positive in ELISA test (Enzyme Linked Immunosorbent Assay) could be confirmed as suffering from dengue fever.
A senior professor of medicine at MGM Hospital said on condition of anonymity that diagnostic test for dengue could only be done in Chennai. There is no way to test dengue fevers in Telangana State. “Some tests are done using a mini-kit in Hyderabad and elsewhere but they are not accurate,” he explained.
A record number of 107 dengue cases have been reported this year which is almost triple of last year’s figure.
More than half a dozen deaths happened due to dengue fever, but officials confirmed only a couple of deaths.
Since the people who suffered from moderate fever recovered, they were not reported. Bodhan, with 26 cases, topped the list followed by the district headquarters town with 19.
IMA former president and noted physician Dr. J. Bapu Reddy said that in Lakshmi Hospital alone more than 30 dengue patients were admitted in the last two months. Director of the Kavitha Children’s Hospital Dr. N. Ramchander said that treatment for dengue fever was difficult as there was no single donor platelet machine available in any hospital here. There was no efficacy in treatment with platelets collected from multiple donors, he said.
“The single donor platelet machine is costlier and we are trying to set it up at the Indian Red Cross Society by collecting donations from philanthropists. More dengue cases are coming from rural areas” he said.
{With inputs from K.M. Dayashankar (Karimnagar), Gollapudi Srinivasa Rao (Warangal) and P. Ram Mohan (Nizamabad)}
