Mumbai: The Indian government has sent high-level teams to nine states and Union Territories with high dengue cases. The teams have been sent to Haryana, Punjab, Kerala, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu, Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Delhi, and Jammu and Kashmir.
“A total of 15 States/UTs are reporting their maximum number of cases in the current year; As of October 31, these states account for 86 per cent of the total dengue cases in the country,” the Centre said in a release on Wednesday.
The specialist teams include officials from the National Centers for Disease Control and the National Vector Borne Disease Control Program.
“It has been decided by the competent authority to depute central teams to the identified states to assist the state governments by providing technical guidance, including public health measures, for managing the ongoing outbreak of dengue,” an office memorandum sent to principal secretaries (Health) and directors general of health services of the nine states and UTs.
Delhi has reported over 1,530 dengue cases so far this year, of which around 1,200 cases were reported in October alone, the highest number in the month in the last four years.
In Maharashtra’s Pune, the municipal corporation registered 168 cases of vector-borne disease in the month of October. Though this is less than the 192 dengue cases reported in the city in September, the decline is modest.
So far this disease has claimed 33 lives in Chandigarh. In fact, the number of dengue cases reported in October this year is higher than the annual caseload in the Tricity in the last three years.
Emergency wards of hospitals are full of patients suffering from fever.
The number of dengue cases in Uttar Pradesh’s Ghaziabad is already close to 1,000. According to the Health Department, about 68 per cent of these cases have come in the month of October.
Dengue virus is transmitted to people through the bite of infected Aedes species mosquitoes. Once contracted, the infection causes fever, body aches, nausea, vomiting and, in severe cases, internal bleeding or a fatal drop in blood pressure.
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