A 25-year-old man from Dum Dum died of dengue at the Infectious Disease and Beleghata General Hospital on Tuesday morning.
A resident of North Badra Delhi Road in Italgacha, Sidhartha Bala was admitted to the government hospital in Beleghata on Monday evening after testing positive for dengue, doctors said.
“The patient arrived in a critical condition with falling blood pressure and severe headache. He was vomiting continuously. We started treatment after injecting fluids, but his condition continued to deteriorate,” said a senior doctor at the hospital.
“The patient was shifted to the critical care unit, where he died around 6.15am. It was a case of dengue shock syndrome.”
Bala got tested for dengue after running a temperature for a few days. He had high fever when he was admitted to a hospital run by Dum Dum Municipality three days back with complaints of lower abdominal pain.
“His condition had turned critical and symptoms of dengue shock had set in by the time the hospital referred the patient to us,” a doctor at the Beleghata infectious diseases hospital said.
A number of dengue cases have been reported from Dum Dum and its adjoining areas over the past two weeks.
A week back, Shyamali Banerjee, a 58-year-old resident of a locality in the South Dum Dum municipal area, had died of dengue.
Last Friday, mayor Firhad Hakim had said the number of fresh dengue infections
in Calcutta had gone up by over 1,200 over the previous week.
According to figures shared by Hakim in the earlier two weeks, 977 fresh dengue cases had been reported from September 22 to 29 and 1,102 from September 15 to 22 in the Calcutta municipal area.
Dum Dum and South Dum Dum municipal areas are in North 24-Parganas, the district adjoining Calcutta that has been recording the highest number of dengue cases in the state over the last couple of weeks, health department officials said.
“District officials have been asked to coordinate with municipalities to prevent accumulation of garbage and water in the dengue-prone areas,” an official at Swasthya Bhavan said. “Unfortunately, not all municipalities have shown the intent to spread awareness on how to prevent the spread of dengue.”
Officials at Nabanna said Hakim, also urban development minister, has convened a meeting with representatives of 128 municipalities next week to take stock of the dengue situation and discuss the efficacy of the efforts taken so far to contain the spread of the disease.
