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Prof Azad, head of the Medicine department at Dhaka Medical College Hospital, spelled out some steps to be followed when someone is detected with the mosquito-borne fever.
He recommended drinking plenty of water from the first day of fever, taking only paracetamol and staying inside mosquito nets. The physician advised patients to visit doctors and let them take the decision after observing their symptoms and testing the blood.
He also underscored the need for destroying breeding grounds of mosquitoes and keep houses clean to prevent dengue fever.
Meanwhile, DMCH Director Brig Gen AKM Nasir Uddin identified a number of factors like nature, environment, weather, people’s behaviour and lack of preventive measures behind the current dengue situation in the country which according to him is yet to turn epidemic.
He told the news agency that the World Health Organisation (WHO) has a specific index to call the dengue prevalence epidemic after counting the number of infections against the total population of a country. “The dengue infection has not yet turned pandemic against the entire population of the country,” he said.
The DMCH director also termed the discharge of dengue patients from hospitals after treatment significant. “We’ve been able to discharge more patients in a short time.”
He said physicians have taken the dengue situation as a national and humanitarian commitment, and a challenge.
When UNB approached the mother of a dengue-infected girl at the DMCH, she said her daughter first complained of severe pain. “After three days, she became senseless while at school. Teachers took her to a local hospital and later I shifted her to the DMCH.” She also said her daughter was recovering fast and doctors were available at the hospital.
According to the data of Directorate General Health Service (DGHS), from January 1 this year, a total of 49,999 dengue patients got admitted to the hospitals. Among them, 40 patients have died.
A total of 1,719 dengue patients were admitted to different hospitals in the last 24 hours, between Thursday and Friday morning, across the country. Of them 759 patients are currently undergoing treatment at hospitals in Dhaka, whereas 960 people has been admitted outside Dhaka.
In a press release issued yesterday noon, DGHS said the number of admitted patients currently undergoing treatment in government and private hospitals combined is 7,716.
World Health Organisation has identified as some factors — spatial variations of rainfall, temperature, relative humidity, degree of urbanisation and quality of vector control services in urban areas -behind the dengue outbreak in tropical regions.
An estimated 500,000 people with severe dengue require hospitalisation each year, and the mortality rate is 2.5 percent annually, it says.
Dengue is a mosquito-borne viral disease. It transmits by female mosquitoes mainly of the species Aedes aegypti. Aedes mosquito also transmits chikungunya, yellow fever and Zika infection, says WHO.
Before 1970, only nine countries had experienced severe dengue epidemics. Today, the disease is endemic in more than 100 countries in Africa, America, Eastern Mediterranean, South-East Asia and Western Pacific regions. The Americas, South-East Asia and Western Pacific regions are the most seriously affected.
The Philippines declared a “national dengue epidemic” after at least 622 people lost their lives from the mosquito-borne disease this year.
News Room , 23 Sep 2019
AG
