At least 285 fresh cases of dengue were reported in the Delhi/NCR region just last week, thus taking the total count of people affected by the disease to 1595 this year. The total number of cases of malaria and chikungunya reported in the week ending November 3, are 11 and 4 respectively.
The total count of people affected by dengue, only in the month of October, is 1114, more than three times the last month when the cases were only 374. There were no reported cases in the first three days of November.
Overall all the cases for the three diseases have gone down as compared to 2017 where chikungunya and malaria were 502 and 552 respectively by this time last year, and 133 and 438 this year; whereas dengue was 3,829 by this time last year. Chikungunya has shown a steep decline over last two years with zero cases in November and 54 cases in the month of October.
However, contrary to the MCD data, comparing last years cases, a survey report recently released by a non-profit organization states that over one lakh cases of Dengue and Malaria were listed to them during a door-to-door research in 2017-18, which is more than 20 times higher than the cases shown in the Government reports. This has raised several questions on data suppression by the Municipal Corporations of Delhi.
As per the foundation data, the information received under RTI from various government institutions shows that there were 7,153 Dengue cases and 4,205 Malaria cases in Delhi in 2017-18, while the survey data across all 12 Zones of Delhi where 28,624 households were surveyed, showed that the cases of Dengue were as high as 1,06,456 and cases of Malaria were 1,26,334.
As dengue is showing a significant rise authorities fear more visits of patients to the hospitals and then Intensive Care Units.
"There is definitely rise in the Malaria and Dengue cases as compared to last month but the situation is definitely better than last year," says Doctor SP Byotra, Head of Medicine, Sir Ganga Ram Hospital. "It is strongly suggested to keep the surroundings dry and free from mosquito breeding zones, we do not need another epidemic," he adds.
