A 13-year-old boy from Haji Mohammed Mohsin Square in Kolkata was tested positive for dengue and thereby, died at a hospital in Park Circus on Wednesday.
Civic officials called it the first dengue death in the city of this year, The Telegraph reported.
Dengue is a mosquito-borne viral infection which causes severe flu-like illness and, sometimes causes a potentially lethal complication. The incidence of dengue has increased 30-fold over the last 50 years. Up to 50-100 million infections are now estimated to occur annually in over 100 endemic countries, putting almost half of the world’s population at risk.
Dengue fever symptoms include fever, intense headache, body aches, joint pains, loss of appetite, nausea, vomiting, and skin rashes and mucosal bleeding. The disease can be fatal in nature if it’s not diagnosed and treated on time. There is no specific treatment for dengue fever, but adequate fluid intake and bed rest is important.
Ruhul Mallick — a Class VI student of St Anthony’s High School on Market Street, had last attended school on Friday. It was the same day he started running a temperature.
The family members first took the boy to a local doctor, the report added. But since Ruhul’s condition did not improve, they got him admitted to the Institute of Child Health which is near the Park Circus Bridge No. 4.
“A blood test at the hospital confirmed that he was suffering from dengue. He died because of severe dengue that led to multi-organ failure. He had suffered from fever for four days when he was admitted here,” an official of the hospital told The Telegraph.
“The child’s blood pressure was very low and he was also suffering from diarrhoea. The temperature started coming down after he was admitted to the hospital. But as it happens in case of dengue, complications started when the fever started subsiding.”
A doctor was quoted saying, “Fluid started accumulating in his lungs. The boy was shifted to the intensive care unit as his condition didn’t improve in the general ward.”
A CMC hospital official was quoted saying that Ward 52, where Ruhul lived, was not vulnerable to dengue. Around 600 dengue cases have been reported from the CMC area so far this year.
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