The sudden spike in the number of dengue and malaria cases in Delhi has created a shortage of hospital beds in the national capital. Even private hospitals are struggling to cope up with rising cases and have reached their threshold capacity. The Delhi government has claimed that it’s closely monitoring the situation and there’s no shortage of hospital beds for patients.
In wake of the rising number of cases, the Delhi government has listed waterborne diseases like dengue, malaria and chikungunya under the Epidemic Act. After this, private and government hospitals will have to provide details about every patient to the appointed nodal agency.
In the past week, a total of 531 new cases of dengue have been reported from areas under the three municipal corporations, New Delhi Municipal Council, Delhi Cantonment Board and Airport Authority of India. The number of malaria cases, meanwhile, shot up to 160 and chikungunya cases moved to 81 from the previous 73.
Government hospitals, including AIIMS and Safdarjung, have been witnessing a sharp rise in dengue, malaria, chikungunya patient admission. The added number of patients coming to Delhi from other states like Haryana, Punjab, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and others has only made the bed shortage issue severe. According to estimates, nearly 60 percent of the cases are reported from outside Delhi.
The constant flow of severe cases from other states has contributed largely to the prolonged shortage of beds in Delhi hospitals. While the government has been working to increase the number of beds, doctors believe the increment of beds alone is not going improve the situation. Emphasizing the need to increase the staff strength, doctors said that the mere increase of beds won’t help the cause because a single doctor cannot treat 100 or 200 patients at a time.
The Delhi government has asked hospitals under its jurisdiction to use one-third of the beds reserved for the COVID-19 patients for cases of dengue, malaria. While the government claims availability of nearly 11,000 beds, the constant rise of fresh cases indicate a different scenario
The Delhi government is said to have arranged extra beds at east Delhi’s Swami Dayanand Hospital and North MCD’s Hindu Rao hospital but the situation has not shown any signs of improvement as yet.
The number of causalities due to malaria, dengue, chikungunya have also been on the rise, According to data released by civic agencies across Delhi, a total of six patients have lost life due to dengue. Out of the total six, five deaths were reported last week.
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