Doctors at Indira Gandhi Institute of Medical Sciences (IGIMS) are going to conduct research on dengue-related incidents in the state, the health-care hub's ethical committee decided at a meeting on Wednesday.

"On an average how many patients need to undergo platelet transfusion? What's the average number of patients with normal dengue fever and those with dengue haemorrrhagic fever? The research will focus on all these factors," said Manish Mandal, additional medical superintendent of the hospital.

"Dengue apart, the research will focus on which diseases occurs mostly among the elderly and women. Then there will be research to find out psychological problems among the youth. Altogether, 67 research papers, one related to increasing incidents of dengue, got the ethical committee's approval on Wednesday."

Sources said that IGIMS's decision to conduct research on dengue assumes importance because the health department has pegged the number of dengue cases across the state at 2,342. "Of these, 1,827 are confirmed cases. Patna tops the districts with 1,033 cases," said state epidemiologist Ragini Mishra.

According to health department sources, dengue hit Patna in July this year. Last year, too, the first case was reported in July. Again, like in previous years, this year, too, the vector control drive has been irregular as Patna Municipal Corporation has not been able to conduct fogging exercise and larvicide treatment properly in the areas where dengue cases were detected, thus leaving a window for further transmission of the disease. Officially, there have been no dengue deaths this year.

"As per our records no dengue death has been reported so far," Mishra said.

Sources associated with the health department's vector control programme, however, said that the dengue death-related report might be a bluff because the private health facilities reported six to seven dengue deaths last year but the health department did not confirm them as dengue deaths because the private facilities had carried out rapid diagnostic tests of the patients while health department officials only consider reports of Elisa test as authentic.

"Even now only Elisa test reports are considered authentic," the source in the health department said. "The rapid diagnostic test reports are still not considered authentic even though almost all district hospitals are conducting rapid diagnostic tests to confirm status of the disease. The Elisa test is only available at the medical college hospitals. The under reporting of cases is also a worrisome factor.

"The Union government has made dengue a notifiable disease but still most of the private hospitals are not reporting dengue cases to the department. This indifference is causing fewer dengue (suspected) cases being reported to the state health government, resulting in the government's failure to curb the rising number of dengue cases."