Mamata promises new dengue test kits

With the dengue toll in Bengal on the rise, the West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee paid a surprise visit to the state-owned Seth Sukhlal Karnani Memorial (SSKM) Hospital on Tuesday morning and was told that three to four people had reported fever at the hospital OPD since morning.

Criticising a section of doctors for allegedly mentioning dengue in death certificates even in cases of heart attacks or strokes, she said that new dengue detection kits would be used from Wednesday. ‘Some doctors are making no attempt at diagnosis. They are not conducting proper tests. And they are writing dengue in the death certificates, even when the deaths have been caused by cardiac failure or strokes,’ she told reporters at Writer’s Buildings.

Banerjee claimed that the disease had struck all over India and the situation was far better in West Bengal. Till August this year, 1,869 patients were down with the disease in Karnataka, 2,683 in Kerala and 4,675 in Tamil Nadu. While 39 people died in Tamil Nadu, 17 died in Karnataka and nine in Kerala. In Bengal, the dengue death toll has been put at three.