FYI Satyendar Jain, Chikungunya Is out of Control and It Kills

5 deaths, 90% rise in cases in one week. Stop the politics Satyendra Jain and read this Chikungunya fact sheet.

In a repeat, chikungunya cases and death toll rise steadily as political parties blame each other. (Photo: iStock)

Delhi is in the ICU but you can never address a problem until you fully acknowledge the extent of it.

For example, let’s talk about Delhi Health Minister’s claims on chikungunya, currently shirking away from action and compare them with facts, hard facts.

Satyendar Jain: It is impossible to die from chikungunya.

Medical Fact: In developed countries, deaths from chikungunya happen in one out of 1,000 cases. In India the fatality rate will be higher, but no research analysis has been conducted on the matter. However, in people with any co-morbid condition – diabetes, heart ailments, cancer, tuberculosis, or in babies under the age of one and elderlies above the age of 65 – death from brain inflammation, septic shock and multi-organ failure can happen.

Satyendar Jain: There is no outbreak, it has been created by you [media] by spreading panic.

Ground Reality: There has been a 90 percent spike in chikungunya cases in the last week itself as the total figure mounted to 1,158 (at the time of publication) compared to 64 cases in 2015. More than 100 doctors at AIIMS have been stung by a twin attack of dengue-chikungunya, leaving Delhi in a critical position.

Satyendar Jain, 2015: Dengue is a rich man’s disease.

Ground Reality: Delhi was brutally savaged by the worst outbreak of dengue in more than a decade. Ill-equipped hospitals were brimming and an analysis by the John Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health found that the infection rate was similar in the affluent and the poor neighbourhoods.

Going by the history of the past years, the brutality of the aedes aegypti mosquito peaks in October and stops only in mid-November when the winter sets in. We’re rightly in panic mode, even if Mr Health Minister is not.

Hospitals Are Swamped, the Peak Is Yet To Come and Everyone Has One Underlying Chronic Ailment or the Other

A 75-year-old man is the latest casualty to chikungunya in Delhi. He was admitted to Gangaram hospital on 12 September. In less than 24 hours, he passed away due to chikungunya-related kidney failure. Photo: Reuters)

If you are an otherwise healthy individual with no chronic illness, below the age of 60 years, doctors insist on treating the disease at home. That’s medical speak but chew on this:

• 42.5 percent of Delhi is diabetic, 1 in 5 has high blood pressure problems: Large-scale SITE study, 2013
  
• 38 percent of men between ages 25-45 have alarmingly high cholesterol: ASSOCHAM study, 2013
• Delhi is the ‘young heart attack Capital’ of India too. The highest number of hearts stop beating in Delhi below the age of 45: ASSOCHAM study, 2013
  
  

Who in the Capital doesn’t have an underlying disease then? And we haven’t even shocked you with TB and cancer figures yet.

Anyone in the high-risk category should be monitored. There have been cases where the infection involves vision, brain inflammation or the body goes into septic shock and multi-organ failure. 

Dr KK Agarwal, national president-elect, Indian Medical Association

Related Read: Chikungunya Bites Delhi - 5 Must-Know Facts About This Outbreak

A 2006 analysis of 300 patients by the Central Indian Institute of Medical Sciences based in Nagpur, found that in roughly one-fifth of the infections, some kind of a neurological complication gets developed in the brain, it can be brain swelling, long-term nerve damage, spinal issues or even muscle weakness.

You wanted medical facts, Mr Health Minister.

We Don’t Want Chikungunya Politics, We Want You to Learn From the Sri-Lanka Model

Each year we lose a little more to the mosquitoes and then blame the annual furore on sparse rains, robust rains, less humidity, more humidity blah blah blah. (Photo: Reuters)

While Delhi is battling an aggressive and a virulent foe, Kejriwal’s entire cabinet plus LG Najeeb Jung (barring Kapil Mishra), have been MIA.

A visibly-rattled Satyendar Jain lost his cool when quizzed about the crippling state of Delhi but we’d appreciate it if he looks at our equally hot and humid neighbour, Sri Lanka, for some inspiration in wiping out a mosquito disease for good.

Sri Lanka has eradicated malaria, a mosquito-borne disease which kills 4 lakh people every year in the world — mostly children and pregnant women.

Sri Lanka did not just spend the budget on procuring mosquito nets and malaria drugs — it had a plan and political commitment to end malaria.

Satyendar Jain, the Capital is under a triple vector attack of dengue, malaria and chikungunya. Politcal blame-game is getting too lame now and we’d rather see some real action and political will for this annual furore. That would be refreshing for a change.

Must Read: In the Battle Against Mosquitoes, Why Does Delhi Always Lose?