Two more, including a teenage girl, died of dengue in Dhaka and Khulna yesterday. A total of 1,189 dengue patients were admitted to different hospitals in the last 24 hours across the country. Among the new cases in the past 24 hours, a total of 524 patients had been hospitalised in Dhaka, whereas 665 patients had been admitted to hospitals outside Dhaka. According to the Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS), the number of recorded cases in the first eight months of this year has hit 68,410. Of them, at least 49,949 dengue patients were hospitalised across the country in August alone. Among the dengue victims, a 12-year-old girl, Monisha Akter breathed her last at the intensive care unit (ICU) of the Rangpur Medical College Hospital (RMCH) yesterday.

Monisha was living with her parents in Dhaka where she contracted dengue. Later, she was taken to M Abdur Rahim Medical College Hospital in Dinajpur. She was shifted to RMCH on August 26.

The second deceased was Sharmin Akhter, wife of a journalist, who died at the Rajdhani Central Hospital yesterday. She was diagnosed with the dengue virus on August 22. While her condition deteriorated, she was brought to Dhaka and admitted to the Shaheed Suhrawardy Medical College and Hospital.  

Later, she was shifted to the ICU of Rajdhani Central Hospital.

A total of 63,200 patients have already been released from hospitals. So, 92 per cent of the hospitalised dengue patients have gone home after treatment.  

The number of admitted patients currently undergoing treatment in government and private hospitals combined is 5,030, according to DGHS data.  

As many as 2,785 patients are currently receiving treatment in 41 government and private hospitals in the capital, whereas

a total of 2,245 patients are undergoing treatment outside the capital. “We have scrutinised 88 dengue death cases and confirmed 52 dengue deaths so far. We have so far received information about the deaths of 180 people in the dengue outbreak. We are scrutinising the information to confirm whether the deaths had indeed been caused by the mosquito-borne disease,” said Dr Meerjady Sabrina Flora, director of the Institute of Epidemiology Disease Control and Research (IEDCR).

Dr Ayesha Akhter, in charge of the disease control room at the Directorate of Health, said: “We’ve received a record number of dengue patients from across the country so far. This month, the number of dengue cases is much higher than that of last month. The number of dengue patients admitted to hospitals across the country is decreasing gradually.”

She also said the health department had taken several initiatives to control the situation. “If the initiatives taken by the DGHS work properly, the number of dengue patients will hopefully decrease further,” she added.