Over One lakh Contract Communicable Diseases in Eight Days; 30 Deaths in First Week of July

Thiruvananthapuram: Eight days into this month, 1.06 lakh people in the state have been confirmed to have contracted communicable diseases. This figure accounts only for those who sought treatment at government hospitals. The break-up of cases is as follows: fever – 84,658, diarrhoea – 19,428, dengue fever – 834, chickenpox – 675, influenza – 661, jaundice – 197, leptospirosis – 113, mumps – 81, malaria – 56, shigella – 34, typhus – 12, chikungunya – 9, and amoebic meningoencephalitis – 2. Thirty people died within the last week alone. On Wednesday, 96 people were confirmed with dengue fever, 24 with jaundice, and 15 with leptospirosis.

Last month, 241 people died of communicable diseases. Test results are still awaited for 71 people who died with symptoms of disease.

Most of those affected by diseases such as shigella, mumps and dengue fever are children. Over the course of a month, 306 people across the state were confirmed to have mumps.

Two children died of shigella infection in Kozhikode and Malappuram within a month. Due to shigella, a school at Thrikkunnappuzha opened two weeks late. At a school in Sulthan Bathery, Wayanad, 164 children sought treatment with symptoms, of whom 6 were confirmed to have the disease.

With pre-monsoon cleaning drives having failed even in schools, the spread of dengue fever is also severe. Distribution of Vitamin A, essential for children's immunity, has also been disrupted. Meanwhile, medicines are not reaching hospitals on schedule, and many hospitals are facing shortages of essential drugs.