The number of dengue cases reported in just seven big city hospitals is more than the Government’s official figure of 4,362 for the entire city, sources told The Hindu . This indicates that the actual number of cases, including those from other hospitals in the city, is much higher.
Several doctors, on condition of anonymity, said the official figure is low and one doctor even said that it’s a “gross underestimate”.
According to the South Delhi Municipal Corporation (SDMC), which releases the official dengue data for the city, 4,362 cases, including those from outside Delhi, were reported this year till November 6. But the total number of cases reported at the seven city hospitals, which were selected randomly, till November 6 is over 4,600, said sources.
Despite repeated attempts, the Press Relations Officer (PRO) of the SDMC did not offer a comment on the official figure being low.
‘No timely reporting’
When contacted, another official of the civic body said, “Many hospitals in the city have not done timely reporting of dengue cases to the authorities. It was only after the Delhi Government notified vector-borne diseases, under the Epidemic Diseases Act, that it became mandatory for hospitals to report the cases to the authorities. Had the hospitals done timely reporting of dengue cases, the municipal corporations could have stepped in and checked the situation in those areas.”
An official at the Central Government-run Safdarjung Hospital said that “853 cases of dengue and 13 deaths were recorded from January 1 to November 1”. “Of these 853 cases, 518 were from Delhi and 335 from outside. Of the 13 deaths, three were from outside Delhi while one was a resident of the city. Nine deaths occurred in October, one in September, one in August and two in July,” the official said, adding that the details of the remaining nine deaths are not available.
“About 1,300 confirmed cases of dengue have been reported at Lok Nayak Hospital this year. About 20% of them are from outside Delhi,” a Government source said. Some of these patients had got the dengue detection test done outside the hospital. The Lok Nayak Hospital is the largest Delhi Government-run hospital.
At the Centre-run ESIC Hospital in Okhla, 38 and 318 cases of dengue were recorded in September and October respectively, a source at the hospital said.
More than 750 dengue cases were reported at the State-run Deen Dayal Upadhyay Hospital till November 6, an official said.
Sources at three private hospitals said they reported at least 700, 400, and 240 dengue cases till November 6. “The official figure is a gross underestimate. But there is a lot of pressure on us from the MCD and we can’t do much as we need to go to them for many permissions,” a doctor at one of the three private hospitals said.
Doctors at other hospitals, which did not share their data, also said the official figure is low considering the caseload they faced.
“NS1 antigen test works to detect dengue only in the first four to five days of the infection. After that you have to do the IgM antibody test. But our hospital did not have IgM testing facility and we were getting serious patients who were coming to us after five or six days. In a majority of these cases, the NS1 antigen test was coming out to be negative but the patients had all the signs of dengue such as falling platelets. These patients are not officially counted as dengue patients,” a doctor at Delhi government-run Dr. Baba Saheb Ambedkar Hospital said.
At RML Hospital, an additional 23-bed dengue ward has remained full since its establishment on October 27.
