The death of at least four people due to Dengue has created panic with Assam chief minister Tarun Gogoi asking the health department and municipal bodies to take urgent steps to check the spread of mosquito.
The latest death was reported from Dibrugarh where a patient Manjula, 40, who was detected dengue fever, died at Aditya Hospital. Earlier, three persons including a wife and husband died of dengue in a Guwahati hospital. The doctors attributed these deaths to delay in diagnosing the cases. However, Assam health minister Himanta Biswa Sarma claimed that the health department is competent to tackle the dengue outbreak. He also clarified that in comparison to previous year, the state has recorded very less number of dengue patients this year.
He pointed out that there were 966 cases of dengue in 2012 whereas in 2013 only 41 cases of dengue fever are reported so far.
Moreover, compared to others states of the country, the number of dengue patients are much lesser in Assam. People need to be careful so that it does not spread more, he said informing that state health department has already fogged 68,000 houses in the city with anti-mosquito gas.
Meanwhile, local media, which raised an alarm on outbreak of dengue in the state, claimed that more than 20 dengue patients from different parts of the state were admitted to Guwahati Medical College Hospital. The local media also claimed that at least 28 patients who were detected dengue are being treated at various private nursing homes of Guwahati. Meanw-hile, local administration has also made an appeal to residents to keep their locality clean so that dengue could be checked from spreading to new areas.
In some of the area where dengue deaths were reported, angry residents came out voluntarily to clean the drainage system.