A 10-year-old girl from a village near Ponneri in Tiruvallur district died at the Institute of Child Health, (ICH) Egmore, on Friday. This is the fifth death from the district since last week.
“This is not related to the deaths of four children from the district. This is an isolated case of Hepatitis A,” Director of Public Health K. Kolandaisamy said.
Meanwhile, three quacks were held in Ponneri on Friday. G. Sreenivasan, 47, and M. Paramasivam, 63, both operating out of Ponneri for several years, as well as B. Somasekar, 38, operating from Kadamancheri, were arrested, police said. A search is on for two others reported to be operating in the locality.
“The child, M. Vaishnavi, from Keerapakkam near Ponneri, fell ill about two weeks ago and is believed to have been treated by a quack, before she was taken to the Ponneri government hospital and then referred to Egmore,” he said.
This death comes a week after the death of four young children from two villages – Adi Andhrawada and Kaverirajapuram - at the ICH, which health officials have attributed to mixed infections, including dengue and leptospirosis.
“The lab report in Vaishnavi’s case confirmed Hepatitis A. We have already conducted surveillance in the village to check for any other cases, but this seems isolated. In any case, we are checking all the pipelines in the village, and if necessary, will replace them,” he said.
Hepatitis A can be caused by consuming contaminated food or water.
A doctor at the ICH said that Vaishnavi was admitted on August 22, and that her cause of death was hepatic encephalopathy.
135 casesAs of Friday, a total of 135 persons from the district have been admitted to various hospitals for fever, including 17 at the Ponneri government hospital.
“Of the total, six are cases of dengue,” said Dr. Kolandaisamy, five at the Tiruvallur Government Hospital and one at the Tiruttani government hospital. By Friday evening, three of them had been discharged after treatment, he said.
After visiting the government hospitals in Ponneri, Tiruvallur and Tiruttani, Health Minister C. Vijaya Baskar said he had reviewed the situation in the district for the third time in the week. The cases were limited to Kaverirajapuram, Ponpadi and a few other villages.
The government had taken a multi-dimensional approach to tackle the situation and there was no need for the public to panic, he said. At the Tiruttani government hospital, a woman, Gajalakshmi, had tested positive for dengue and she had been informed, he said.
As people tend to panic and get admitted in hospitals out of anxiety, hospital authorities have been asked to not treat them as outpatients but admit them and discharge them only once they are convinced that they are fine, he said. Mobile clinics have been set up at the villages where the four children who died came from, and 28 medical teams are monitoring the situation, he said.
