BBMP stamp must for dengue confirmation

Pvt hospitals have to submit dengue case blood samples to Palike-approved labs

 "Even if private hospitals have their own sophisticated laboratories to test samples for dengue and chikungunya, we need authentication and a confirmation from NIV is a must since it a nationally-certified laboratory. All blood samples must be sent to NIV or PHI for testing," Ashok said.  “Even if a person is dead, we need authentic confirmation if the person has died due to dengue or due to some other reason,” he said.

Doctors from private hospitals where dengue deaths had occurred, told Deccan Herald that they had indeed sent details of the deaths to BBMP.

Dr Shashikant, medical officer, St Martha's Hospital, said that although there was one suspected dengue death in the hospital last month, the lab test reported negative for dengue.

"Many a times, the clinical tests suggest that the patient is suffering from dengue but the lab test shows negative. This is due to false negative or positive results, shown during the test," he said. Last month, the hospital received close to 59 positive cases. However, the numbers were expected to touch 72 to 80 cases in the current month.

At Chinmaya Mission Hospital, tests are being conducted on the basis of antibody levels rather than isolation of virus, which the BBMP-approved labs conduct.

"We have a tie up with Central lab with NABL accreditation. As the test on the basis of isolation of virus is cost and time consuming, we resorted to this method so that we could start treatment immediately," said hospital medical director M R Chandrashekar.  

As BBMP does not take this test into consideration, it has not collected the data from the hospital for some time now. The hospital has received 455 positive dengue cases out of 1,018 fever cases last month. Of them, three had Dengue Shock Syndrome and two or three others had Dengue Hemorrhagic Fever.

NIV has 164 positive cases of Dengue in Bangalore for the month of April, May and June and 240 cases all over the State. PHI has confirmed 33 positive cases for the month of June and July in the City.

Dengue fever is caused due to a mosquito bite normally in the mornings. These mosquitoes breed on fresh water and not in drains which is the normal assumption. They breed on uncovered stored water, potted plants, coconut shell, broken water bottle and stagnated rain water etc.