Dengue stings city, children worst hit

SURAT: Surat Municipal Corporation's (SMC) vector-borne disease control (VBDC) department may claim otherwise, but the fact is number of dengue cases in the city is increasing at an alarming rate. Blood banks say demand for blood platelets has doubled in September 2016. They are supplied to a patient when count of blood platelets reduce in the body. External injection of blood platelets help stop haemorrhagic tendency in a patient.
Surat Raktadan Kendra (RKK) supplies blood platelets to nearly 400 hospitals in city. RKK's chief Dr Narendra Vasavda said, "Patients whose blood platelets count drop below 10,000 from a normal average between 1.5 and 30 lakh need to be injected with blood platelets to stop bleeding tendency in them. Such cases have doubled in September 2016 when compared to September 2015 and it is mainly due to spread of viral diseases like dengue."
The outbreak of viral fever in some parts of the city like Udhna, Pandesara, Limbayat, Bamroli and Parvat is due to dual weather. "Dual weather is highly conducive to breeding of mosquitoes which cause dengue, falciparum and other viral diseases," said Dr Krishnakant Bhatt, medicine department, New Civil Hospital.
Urban Health Climate Resilience Centre (UHCRC) director Dr Vikas Desai, "There is an increase in the number of cases of dengue in the city. Many people have reported symptoms of high fever, severe headache, heavy body ache etc. There is no specific drug for dengue and it has to treated as per symptoms of a disease in a person. Patients will have to be careful once the fever is gone. It takes at least 10 days for a person to recover and second and third attacks can be severe."
"Children are worst sufferers of dengue. This is peak time for the spread of dengue and the trend could continue up to October-end," Dr Bhatt said.