43% Delhi NCR residents say someone in their family or close network impacted by dengue: Survey

A recent survey by a digital community based platform has found that 43% of Delhi-NCR residents have someone in their family or close network who has been impacted by dengue this year. Since mid-August, several residents of Delhi-NCR have reported on LocalCircles that they have someone in the family with symptoms of dengue like high fever, fatigue and joint pain.

The survey, which received close to 15,000 responses, stated that 57% respondents from Ghaziabad have someone they know who has been impacted by dengue followed by Delhi with 45 %, Noida with 44%, Faridabad with 40%, and 29% in Gurgaon.

It said 10% of Delhi-NCR respondents have "four or more individuals" in their family or close network impacted by the viral disease.

Also 19% said they have "two to three individuals", and 15% said only "one individual" has been affected in their family.

The majority of 53% of Delhi-NCR residents surveyed said no one has been infected, and 3% could not say about the same. On an aggregate basis, 43% of the respondents said they have someone in their family or close local social network who has been impacted by dengue this year.

"LocalCircles, which also hosts the largest voluntary blood assistance network of Delhi-NCR, has seen over 100% increase in blood platelet requests week-over-week for last six weeks," said Sachin Taparia, founder, LocalCircles.

"The findings indicate that dengue is badly impacting not just Delhi, but all NCR cities, suggesting authorities' immediate intervention to control and mitigate the spread as well as deploy additional healthcare capacity," he said.

In a survey conducted by LocalCircles in August, 70% respondents had said their municipalities were not conducting anti-mosquito fogging or doing it very rarely.