Delhi govt buys 400 new beds for dengue patients

New Delhi, Oct 2: To accommodate the rising number of dengue patients in the national capital, the Delhi government's health department has bought 400 new beds which will soon be placed in hospitals across the city.

"We have bought 400 beds which are part of the 1,000 beds that Delhi government had announced to buy to accommodate the increasing number of dengue patients," a senior official at the Health Department said today.

"The beds are likely to be placed in Lok Nayak Jai Prakash Hospital, Guru Teg Bahadur Hospital and Ambedkar Hospital as they have been dealing with a huge rush of patients seeking treatment for dengue," the official said.

According to doctors in the city, the vector-borne disease will persist till November and then will start declining. But if it rains, the cases my flare up.

They, however, urged people not to panic saying that 99 per cent of dengue cases were "preventable and manageable at home and do not require admission".

"One has to be given enough fluids apart from controlling fever, gastric and dehydration problems," the official said.

Amidst a rising toll and nearly 6,500 dengue cases reported till yesterday, 2015 has seen the worst outbreak of the dengue in Delhi in the last six years.

An update of the dengue report by the civic administration today took the official death toll up to 25 while 37 dengue deaths have been reported by the hospitals.

With 6,486 cases of dengue recorded this year, 2015 has also surpassed the total in this regard for 2010, which had seen 6,259 cases.

PTI