Dengue claims another life, hospitalisation rises again
Dengue fever claimed yet another life on Sunday as the first day of September saw a rise in the daily infection rate of the mosquito-borne viral disease.
In 24 hours until Sunday morning, 902 new dengue patients were hospitalised across Bangladesh.
The day before, 760 people were hospitalised because of dengue as the daily infection rate of the virus showed a downtrend for three days in a row.
Experts said that dengue might continue to wreak havoc until October if weather remained favourable with occurrence of intermittent rain and high humidity.
In the last seven days more dengue infections were recorded in the outlying districts compared to the number of dengue patient seeking treatment in Dhaka.
Until Sunday morning, hospitals in outlying districts admitted 4,104 dengue patients in seven days while hospitals in Dhaka received 3,479 dengue patients during the period.
United News of Bangladesh reported that Khadija Begum, a teacher of Ashulia School and College, died of dengue fever at Savar Enam Medical College Hospital early Sunday.
UNB quoted Rezaul Haque, a physician at the hospital, as saying that Khadija had been admitted to the hospital Saturday afternoon in a critical condition.
She allegedly had been diagnosed with dengue on August 26 but was taken home before she could fully recover.
Though this year the dengue outbreak initially remained confined to the capital city, as had been the case since its first reported occurrence in 2000, it started spreading outside Dhaka on the fourth week of July.
The menace spread all over Bangladesh just in a week while its severity in outlying areas outweighed that in the capital in the subsequent week.
The total number of dengue patients hospitalised so far this year
across the country rose to 71,097 Sunday.
In August alone, at least 52,636 people were hospitalised with dengue while the number of patients admitted to hospitals in July was at least 16,253. The highest number of 2,428 dengue patients was hospitalised on August 7.
While unofficial estimates put the figure of deaths from dengue at 188 so far, including the Saturday’s death, the government’s control room puts the number at 57.
The control room said that the Institute of Epidemiology, Disease Control and Research was verifying 89 more deaths reported to it as caused by dengue fever.
Health control data showed 4,254 people were still receiving treatment at hospitals across Bangladesh, 2,340 of them in Dhaka.
News Courtesy: www.newagebd.net
