Eleven dead but worst is yet to come: All you need to know Delhi's dengue crisis

Six-year-old Aman Sharma, who lost his life on Sunday , has become the face of New Delhi’s ongoing dengue crisis. Aman’s family was turned away from hospitals, provided incorrect diagnosis, repeatedly reminded of crippling medical shortages, and left with no recourse but to watch their little boy take his final breath. Aman was the city’s 10th casualty of dengue this season, even as nearly 1,900 cases have been reported so far. Unfortunately, the worst is yet to come. According to Dr Ekta Gupta, additional professor at the department of virology at the Institute of Liver and Biliary Sciences, who was quoted by Hindustan Times¸ “The disease normally peaks in the second and third weeks of October, so the numbers are going to go further up.” According to the report, this is the worst outbreak the city has seen in five years — in 2010, when carelessness by Commonwealth Games authorities saw 6,259 reported cases. [caption id=“attachment_2434790” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] Representational image. AFP[/caption] So how has the national capital found itself in this situation? On 1 July, Union Health Minister JP Nadda chaired a review meeting with the medical superintendents of Central government-run hospitals — AIIMS, Safdarjung Hospital, Ram Manohar Lohia Hospital and Lady Hardinge Medical College and Hospital — asking them to conduct assessments of the availability of blood and testing kits. In preparation for an outbreak, Nadda had advised them to ‘buckle up’ and formulate an action plan to combat the disease. By August, with the number of dengue cases beginning to rise, and people beginning to self-medicate, the Delhi government ordered a ban on the sale of all blood-thinning medicine — that are usually over-the-counter drugs — like aspirin and ibuprofen without prescription. Delhi Health Minister Satyender Jain had said, “It has been observed that people consume medicines without consulting doctors, thereby increasing the chances of bleeding and destruction of platelets in human blood which many a times turn fatal in dengue cases." By the end of August, with the situation slowly spiralling out of control, the New Delhi Municipal Council issued 76 notices to Rashtrapati Bhavan after mosquito larvae were found breeding in pools of accumulated water all over the President’s Estate. On Monday, when it had become undeniably clear that hospitals were under-staffed and ill-equipped ( see this article by _Firstpost’s_ Tarique Anwar )to handle the rising number of patients, the Delhi government cancelled the leaves of all doctors and paramedical staff — including nurses and lab technicians. An order was also issued by the health minister for all government hospitals to set up ‘fever clinics’ on their premises, in order to detect dengue at the primary level. Who said what? - Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, 15 September : “We are planning to come out with a law so that hospitals refusing treatment to an emergency patient can be penalised. In the next couple of days, we will call a special session of the Legislative Assembly to bring in the law. It is sad that some private hospitals did something so inhuman just for profit… Hospitals which refuse healthcare to patients will not be spared… If we cancel the licences of those hospitals, there will be shortage of hospitals. But we will punish them.” - Satish Upadhyay, president of Delhi BJP, 14 September : “Dengue has been spreading in the city and there is danger of it taking epidemic form but the Delhi government has completely failed in taking preventive steps to control the disease and provide adequate medical facilities to the patients.” - Prime Minister Narendra Modi, 30 August, Mann ki Baat address: “Bhaaiyon-behnon, aajkal dengue ki khabar aati rehti hai. Yeh baat sai hai ki dengue khatarnaak hai, lekin uska bachaav bahut aasan hai. Aur jo main swacch Bharat ki baat kar rahaa hoon na, use voh seedha-seedha juda hai… Desh mein kareeb 514 kendron par dengue ke liye muft mein jaanch ki suvidhaayein uplabdh hain… Hamaare har utsav ko swacchta ke saath ab kyu na jodein?” (Brothers and sisters, these days there’s a lot of news about dengue. It’s true that dengue is dangerous, but preventing it is very simple. And what I’ve been saying about Swacch Bharat is directly connected to this… There are around 514 centres across the nation where free dengue check-ups are available… Why not connect cleanliness with all our festivals?)