164 died of dengue last year
The government yesterday said that 164 people died of dengue last year.
The Institute of Epidemiology, Disease Control and Research (IEDCR) received 266 reports of deaths from the mosquito-borne disease. It reviewed 263 deaths and confirmed that 164 people died from the disease, said Aysha Akhtar, assistant director of the health emergency operation centre and control room of the DGHS.
Besides, 101,354 dengue patients were treated at hospitals across the country last year. Some 49,544 of them were outside Dhaka, she said.
Confusions over the number of fatalities arose after the dengue outbreak as newspaper reports and the government data came up with different figures.
Earlier, Prof Meerjady Sabrina Flora, who is leading the Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS) death review committee, said its members assessed the medical documents and treatment records of a deceased. Several months later, they conduct a “verbal autopsy”.
It is a method of interviewing one or more people who know about the symptoms and circumstances of the deceased, committee members said.
They also collected blood samples of the deceased and examined them at the IEDCR labs, said Flora, also director of the institute.
“For verbal autopsy, we wait for one to three months, because on many occasions, the near and dear ones remain in shock,” she said.
“We need some time to review. This might have caused the difference in the numbers,” she added.
According to the DGHS control room data, 14 new dengue patients were hospitalised in the last 24 hours as of 8:00am yesterday. Ten of them were in the capital.
With them, 112 dengue patients were admitted to hospitals since January 1, the DGHS data said.
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