Patients and their relatives wait outside the fever clinic at AIIMS Hospital. Source: Amit Mehra
Making its stand clear on the deaths caused due to chikungunya complications in the national capital, the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) Friday said they could not be attributed solely to the mosquito-borne infection.
Citing other comorbid conditions in patients who had tested positive for chikungunya and died, Professor M C Misra, Director, AIIMS, said that “the reason for their death is not chikungunya”.
“In cases where patients tested positive for chikungunya and died, the reason for their death was not chikungunya,” said Professor Misra.
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“Deaths due to chikungunya are rare. Here the patient (one of the patients who died) had pneumonia. There are so many cases where patients have died due to pneumonia. A common virus can also be fatal. There are cases where patients have died due to influenza. In case of chikungunya, there is just 0.1 per cent chance of a person dying due to the disease, which means there is a probability of 1 out of 1,000 patients dying to the infection,” he added.
Delving into details of the first reported death due to chikungunya complications at AIIMS this season, Dr S K Sharma, professor and head of the Department of Medicine, AIIMS, said the death “was not due to chikungunya”. The patient was a 54-year-old man from Uttar Pradesh.
“When the patient was referred to AIIMS, he had respiratory distress syndrome, pneumonia, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and uncontrolled diabetes. He was a chronic alcoholic and smoker. If you ask me if the death was due to chikungunya, my answer would be no. Just because someone tested positive (IgM test) for chikungunya does not mean that all the complications are due to chikungunya,” Dr Sharma added.
Expert opinion
Professor Misra reiterated people should not go for hospitalisation in case of chikungunya, except in cases of high-risk patients.
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“In 99.9 per cent cases, there is no requirement for hospitalisation. Patients should focus on home care, hydration and hydrotherapy. This is the most effective way to tackle chikungunya. As far as high temperature is concerned, paracetamol alone cannot reduce the temperature, so rigorous cold sponging is a must,” he added. “There is absolutely no need for tests or requirement for admission for tertiary treatment for chikungunya. When local practitioners refer a patient to hospital, only then should the patient have to go to hospital for further treatment.”
Kaunain Sheriff M is an award-winning investigative journalist and the National Health Editor at The Indian Express. He is the author of Johnson & Johnson Files: The Indian Secrets of a Global Giant, an investigation into one of the world’s most powerful pharmaceutical companies.
With over a decade of experience, Kaunain brings deep expertise in three areas of investigative journalism: law, health, and data. He currently leads The Indian Express newsroom’s in-depth coverage of health.
His work has earned some of the most prestigious honours in journalism, including the Ramnath Goenka Award for Excellence in Journalism, the Society of Publishers in Asia (SOPA) Award, and the Mumbai Press Club’s Red Ink Award.
Kaunain has also collaborated on major global investigations. He was part of the Implant Files project with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), which exposed malpractices in the medical device industry across the world. He also contributed to an international investigation that uncovered how a Chinese big-data firm was monitoring thousands of prominent Indian individuals and institutions in real time.
Over the years, he has reported on several high-profile criminal trials, including the Hashimpura massacre, the 2G spectrum scam, and the coal block allocation case. Within The Indian Express, he has been honoured three times with the Indian Express Excellence Award for his investigations—on the anti-Sikh riots, the Vyapam exam scam, and the abuse of the National Security Act in Uttar Pradesh. ... Read More
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Patients and their relatives wait outside the fever clinic at AIIMS Hospital. Source: Amit Mehra
