Dengue patients three times outside Dhaka

At least 619 new dengue patients were admitted to different hospitals across the country in 24 hours till Sunday morning and among them 456 were hospitalised outside the capital.

Of 2,546 patients currently being treated at hospitals across the country, only 1,033 are in the capital Dhaka, according to Directorate General of Health Services data.

Meanwhile, a recent victim of dengue, a woman from Sirajganj, died while undergoing treatment in the capital on Sunday.

Nilufa Yasmin Nila, 32, died at a private hospital in the capital, our Sirajganj correspondent reported.

She was admitted to the hospital on Friday with dengue and died on Sunday morning, said her brother Asaduzzaman Sohel.

While initially dengue remained confined to the capital, as had been the case since its first reported occurrence in 2000, the infection began to spread outside the capital in the fourth week of July this year.

The dengue menace became more severe in the districts after August 7.

Since the beginning of 2019, 81,186 people were hospitalised with dengue, most of them in Dhaka, until Sunday morning. Of them, 78,437 made full recovery, according to the government.

Since January, the Institute of Epidemiology, Disease Control and Research received reports of 203 suspected dengue-related deaths. According to unofficial records, dengue claimed many more deaths this year.

Bangladesh has been struggling to deal with the unprecedented dengue occurrences across the country this year. Dhaka, the densely-populated capital city, was the centre of the outbreak, from which it spread in other districts.

The dengue hospitalisation rate declined in the last couple of weeks but experts said that there was no reason to be optimistic right now.

There was a possibility that dengue infection rate would rising again in October when post monsoon season ends, they said.

Dengue infection occurs at the advent of monsoon in humid weather which favours breeding the aedes mosquito, the vector for the deadly dengue virus. In Bangladesh, monsoon spans June to September and the post-monsoon season ends in October.

News Courtesy: www.newagebd.net