Bihar man blames doctors for dengue deaths

Patna: A man in Bihar has been making the rounds of police stations to register a case of alleged negligence against doctors after his relative died of mosquito borne illness last week. The victim, Archana Kumari, a resident of Patna, allegedly died from dengue, which has assumed epidemic proportions in the state capital with the total cases crossing over 2,500 so far.

The woman was first admitted to the state-run Patna medical College and Hospital (PMCH) after she fell victim to dengue for treatment but as her condition deteriorated further, she was shifted to a private hospital. She died later.

One of her close relatives Abhijit Kumar blamed gross negligence on the part of the PMCH doctors for taking no proper care of her and keeping the family in the dark. On Friday, he rushed to the local Pirbahore police station in Patna to register a case of negligence against PMCH doctors.

The man was shocked and surprised when the police officials on duty asked him to visit the police station under which jurisdiction the mosquito had bitten the woman. “When I called up the police official to register a case in this regard, he told me to rush the police station where the mosquito had bitten the victim. How can we identify where the mosquitoes had bitten her and how many of them were in numbers?” Abhijit asked the media.

He then rushed to the Kankarbagh police station to register the case since the woman had died in the locality but the cops on duty sent him back to the Pirbahore police station saying the PMCH is located in that area.

Subsequently, the man contacted Patna’s senior superintendent of police and finally Bihar’s top most police official Director General of Police but that too failed to solve his problem. The man is now blaming the system for the dengue outbreak. PMCH superintendent Dr. Rajiv Ranjan denied the allegations of negligence on the part of doctors.

Dengue has grown to epidemic proportions in Bihar with the total number of case touching 2,543. In Patna alone, the total number of persons infected with vector-borne disease is 1,921, indicating the seriousness of the situation.

The dengue outbreak has alarmed the state administration soon after a large part of the state capital remained under heavy waterlogging for close to a fortnight after incessant rains lashed the city for three days in the last week of September. This prompted the authorities to press boats into service to rescue residents to rescue them to safer places or rush relief to them.

The gravity of the situation is underlined from the fact that a prominent entomologist, who was part of a central team which visited Patna to check houses for Aedes mosquito larvae which transmit dengue, has himself fallen victim to dengue fever. “I am shivering with high fever and have pains in my joints since Friday,” Dr Ram Singh told the media on Monday. Singh happens to be the joint director of National Centre for Disease Control head of the Centre for Medical Entomology and Vector Management, New Delhi.

Apart from him, three employees of microbiology department at the PMCH too had fallen victim to dengue fever, badly hampering the routine test of the dengue victims in Patna.