Number of dengue patients has increased in Mahottari, Sindhuli and Chitwan districts. According to Bardibas Hospital in Mahottari, the number of dengue patients has been increasing alarmingly in the district since mid-August.
Dr. Krishna Maharjan, medical superintendent of the hospital, said that 14 people have been infected with dengue as of Sunday.
Among them, three patients of serious nature have been referred to Kathmandu.
According to the hospital, 13 women in Ward No. 1, 2, 3 and 8 of Bardibas Municipality, one woman from neighbouring municipality and seven others have been found infected with dengue in the district.
According to Dr. Maharjan, dengue appeared in two people in Bardibas in July. It increased to 14 by the first week of September.
He said that the increase in the number of patients in three weeks was a matter of worry.
According to the hospital, those diagnosed with dengue are eight men and six women aged between eight and 91 years.
Dengue patients have also been diagnosed in the private hospitals. According to Megh Bahadur Khapangi, lab head at Shuva Swastik Hospital in Bardibas, dengue has been identified in a 40-year-old from Mithila Municipality-6 in Dhanusha District.
As the outbreak of dengue is increasing in the city area, Bardibas Municipality said that it was conducting security, vigilance and awareness programmes to control the spread of dengue.
Mayor Prahlad Chhetri said that they had started spreading mosquito repellents in all the wards. Under the coordination of the chairman of all the 14 wards, a city cleaning programme has been implemented as a campaign to destroy the habitat of dengue-spreading mosquitoes and clean houses, roads, and public places. Mayor Chhetri and Deputy Mayor Taradevi Mahato also participated in the campaign.
Altogether 847 people were infected with dengue Bardibas in October 2017 when it first appeared in the municipality. Since then, small and big outbreaks of dengue have been occurring in Bardibas area every year.
Meanwhile, dengue patients have been found in six of the nine local levels in Sindhuli district, according to Sindhuli District Hospital.
Hospital doctor and COVID-19 focal person Dr. Sagar Devkota said that 95 people have been infected with dengue by Friday in the district. Kamalamai Municipality has 72 of the dengue patients, the highest number of infections.
Two to three patients are found infected with dengue every day, said Dr. Devkota. He said that five of the infected patients have been sent to Kathmandu for further treatment and the remaining patients are receiving treatment at home.
Dudhauli Municipality Health Branch Coordinator Jagdish Mandal said that the municipality has deployed a team to control mosquito and has started spraying pesticides in each house.
Similarly, according to the statistics of Public Health Office Chitwan, 179 people were infected with dengue in Chitwan from mid-July to early September.
Senior Public Health Officer Durgadatta Chapai said that it was the time to be cautious as a large number of dengue infected people were identified in a short period of time.
Chitwan is the district where the first dengue patient was found in Nepal.
“Dengue was identified for the first time in 2004 in Chitwan in a foreigner visiting Nepal,” said Ram KC, a kit expert.
In the year 2010/011, dengue was found in 739 people in Chitwan, while national tally was 900 that year.
In 2016/017, one died of dengue and 687 people were diagnosed with dengue in Chitwan.
Likewise, in 2017/018, 59 people were infected with dengue with one death and in 2018/019, 31 people were diagnosed with dengue, he said.
KC said that dengue, which was mild last year, has spread again this year. But no death from dengue has been reported in Chitwan so far, he added.
Source : TRN,
