When Dr Shaukat Kalam visited Firozabad in Uttar Pradesh in August, he saw signs of a deadly dengue outbreak everywhere. “We found mosquito...
When Dr Shaukat Kalam visited Firozabad in Uttar Pradesh in August, he saw signs of a deadly dengue outbreak everywhere. “We found mosquito breeding in every second house, in the garbage, on the roadside, in articles where water was accumulating,” said the entomologist, an expert on insects, who currently works with the central government’s National Vector Borne Disease Control Programme.
Dengue is a viral infection that spreads through the bite of the Aedes aegypti mosquito. It causes fever, body ache and weakness. In severe cases, it can lead to a drop in platelets that help in blood clotting – this can trigger life-threatening complications.
While dengue is not uncommon in India, this year, several states in northern and central India have seen a sharp rise in cases. Nowhere more than in Uttar Pradesh, where over 29,000 cases had been recorded by the state directorate of health services, as of December 2 – two and a half times the number reported in 2019, the last year there was a spike in cases in the state.
In some districts in the state, cases have virtually exploded. For instance, Firozabad, a district in western Uttar Pradesh, recorded less than 100 cases of dengue annually in 2019...
