‘Comorbidity major cause of dengue deaths in Assam’

Guwahati: Comorbidity among the vulnerable population in the dengue-affected zones has emerged as a major threat, with four of the six dengue-related deaths in the worst dengue-hit Karbi Anglong district occurring due to underlying factors which reduced the immunity levels of the patients, death audit committee of the district, said.

A youth, aged below 30 years of age, died at the Diphu Medical College Hospital (DMCH) on Saturday, taking the state’s dengue death toll this season to seven. While six deaths were from Karbi Anglong, one patient died in Kamrup (Metro) district. The patient from Kamrup (Metro) died at the Gauhati Medical College Hospital (GMCH) earlier this week and he was also suffering from liver cirrhosis.

Addressing the media at Diphu on Saturday, district joint director of health services, Borsing Rongpi, said, “Two dengue-infected patients from Karbi Anglong, who died in this peak season, had chronic liver diseases. The third death case had guillain-barre syndrome. One person had severe diarrhoea. Only two people died mainly due to dengue in Karbi Anglong.”

Rongpi, who heads the death audit committee set up after the dengue outbreak in the hill district, said that though the direct cause of the death was dengue for only two cases, the rest of the four cases will also be counted as dengue deaths though they occured due to underlying factors.

He said the last death solely due to dengue was on November 2 at the DMCH. “The patients who were suffering from other diseases had low immunity. So such patients become more vulnerable,” he added.

Even as the state health department failed to pinpoint the exact causes behind the unexpected dengue outbreak in Karbi Anglong, over 50 dengue positive cases have been detected every day for the last several days with new hospitalization reported almost regularly.