19-year-old boy Kolkata’s first dengue victim this year

KOLKATA: A 19-year-old boy, who had tested positive for dengue, died in a hospital on Tuesday, making it the first reported dengue death in Kolkata this year.
Hospitals across the city are already seeing patients being admitted with dengue and malaria. Now that water puddles have been created everywhere after the torrential rain over the past few days, doctors have warned that there might be a rise in the number of the vector-borne diseases in the days ahead as accumulated water served as the breeding ground for mosquitoes.

Abhirup Saha, a resident of James Long Sarani in Behala, had been down with fever three days before he was hospitalized.When the fever did not subside despite medication and his condition kept deteriorating, he was admitted to Peerless Hospital on Monday. On testing, the teenager was found to be dengue positive and his platelet count revealed to be dangerously low. “Platelet was transfused to the patient but he died on Tuesday, barely 14 hours after being hospitalized. We have a few more dengue and malaria cases. Last year, we did not get a single case of dengue,” said Sudipta Mitra CEO Peerless Hospital. According to a source, Abhirup was admitted with a Baranagar address.
“This kind of rain that allows water accumulation provides for the ideal breeding ground for mosquitoes. We might witness a spurt in the number of dengue and malaria patients in the next couple of weeks. Dengue particularly starts rearing its head by September and cases peak in October. But hopefully, the number should not reach an alarming proportion, like the outbreaks we saw in pre-Covid times,” said Institute of Child Health (ICH) associate professor of paediatrics Prabhas Prasun Giri.
“As far as children are concerned, only a handful of dengue cases have been reported at our hospital so far. One child was admitted to PICU.”
Internal medicine and critical care specialist Sujoy Mukherjee of CMRI pointed out that due to the Covid scene last year, not many other infectious or topical diseases had been reported. “But now, we have started getting not only dengue and malaria patients but also those diagnosed with scrub typhus. We should be seeing more of these cases till October, but the number is likely to decline from November,” said Mukherjee.
Almost all hospitals across the city currently have a few malaria and dengue patients under treatment. “We need to keep our surroundings clean and not allow water to stagnate. Even a small quantity of stagnant water in a broken piece of pot can be a breeding ground for mosquitoes,” added Mukherjee.