First to die was 30-year-old Gudimalla Rajagattu. The government says they didn’t know. Five days later, his father, 85-year-old Lingaiah died in the hospital. The government says he was old and had many diseases. Less than 10 days later, Rajagattu’s 5-year-old daughter Srivarshini fell sick with high fever and died. The government blames the family for being too busy to get her tested. Two days after Srivarshini, her mother – 29-year-old Sona Gudimalla– died giving birth. Her newborn baby is the sole survivor in the family – and is currently battling a fever, too. The Telangana government, now under fire to ignoring the spread of dengue in the state and completely ineffective in the face of an epidemic, is busy trying to shift blame.
The deaths of four people of different ages from the same family – three of them confirmed to have had dengue and one suspected to have succumbed to complications arising out of dengue – has led to widespread outrage in Telangana. The victims hailed from Mancherial district in Telangana. However, the district health department seems more interested in playing a blame game, instead of answering questions on how they’re monitoring and preventing the spread of dengue.
Health officials that TNM spoke to decided to blame private hospitals, stress on technicalities of different tests for dengue, and how the ELISA test is considered the gold standard for dengue testing, versus the NS1 antigen test. However, the technicalities bury two facts: Firstly, the ELISA test isn’t available with most hospitals and labs in the state; and more importantly, if dengue is confirmed using the NS1 antigen test – as in the case of Rajagattu – then why isn’t the government collecting that data and taking measures to prevent the spread of the disease?
Calling the government’s bluff, activists say that it is the health department’s incompetence that has led to so many dengue deaths in the state. Whose fault is it that the ELISA test is not widely available? Who’s fault is it that there is no system in place to track dengue cases in private hospitals?
“What took the government so long to take any kind of action? This dengue epidemic has been going on for at least four months now and we have asked that it be declared a health emergency, but the government has not done anything, despite knowing the fact that this was an extremely pressing problem,” says social activist Lubna Sarwath.
Lubna says that dengue and other similar diseases can be tackled proactively to ensure that there is no spread. In case proactive measures aren’t taken and cases have been detected, the next step is to take the immediate and necessary efforts to prevent further spread of the disease.
“But this government has done absolutely nothing of this kind, if they didn’t do anything to prevent dengue from spreading in the first place, why didn’t they take notice after the first person was suspected to have had dengue? They should have gone to the field to assess the situation and should have taught the other family members about the protective measures to take,” Lubna says.
“Forget about the tests for one moment, why wasn’t anything done as soon as one admission occurred? As soon as they had a suspicion that he had contracted dengue, some action should have been taken. Why did they not teach the family members and neighbours about preventive measures? Why didn’t they go visit the locality and see what factors in the environment were potentially causing mosquitoes to breed and then address it? People are dying, it is not the time for these blame games,” says Lubna.