Via The Times of India: Dengue claims second victim this season. Excerpt:
KOLKATA: Dengue claimed yet another life in the city on Tuesday.
Lab Khan, 38, died at Calcutta National Medical College and Hospital (CNMCH) in the morning, a week after being admitted there.
Two more patients are being treated at the hospital's ITU, of whom the condition of a 35-year old is critical, said sources.
Khan was hospitalised on August 14 with high fever, body ache, and complications like respiratory distress. He was immediately admitted to the ITU. The resident of Raniganj had been referred to the hospital by a private nursing home in the city where his condition did not improve after treatment.
"There is another patient in the ITU who is also suffering from dengue. His condition is critical. The patient is from Kolkata," said a source in the hospital.
This is the second dengue death reported from a city hospital this season. In July, 40-year-old Sushmita Malakar of Sapuipara succumbed to the disease at a private hospital in Jadavpur. Even at that time, the Kolkata Municipal Corporation was not ready to admit it as a case of dengue though the hospital had mentioned haemorrhagic dengue as the cause of death.
In Khan's case, too, the death certificate mentions the cause of the death as "cardiac arrest in a case of dengue", but the health department is not ready to admit it till they get the report of Khan's Mac Elisa test.
Strangely enough, the health department has been trying to play down the dengue threat. But it's a fact that cases of dengue are being reported from other government hospitals as well. Sources in hospitals like SSKM, NRS, RG Kar and Medical College Hospital admitted that dengue patients were admitted in all of them. At SSKM, a patient is in the ITU.
