A 26-year-old doctor at SSKM Hospital, who stayed on Harish Chatterjee Street in Kalighat, died of dengue on Friday morning.
Animesh Maji, who was also a postgraduate student in the hospital’s orthopaedics department, was admitted to the intensive therapy unit (ITU) of the hospital on Wednesday, said officials of the Calcutta Municipal Corporation (CMC).
As the local municipal body, the CMC is responsible for keeping a tab on the dengue incidence in the city and undertaking vector-control measures.
CMC officials said Maji’s family in Bankura told them that the doctor had long duty hours and spent most of the time in the hospital.
“He went home to Bankura earlier this month and returned to Calcutta on October 8. He had a fever during the Puja and was admitted to the hospital,” said a CMC official.
An official at the Institute of Post Graduate Medical Education and Research (SSKM Hospital) said Maji’s condition deteriorated rapidly and he started to bleed internally. “He suffered from shock and passed away,” said a doctor at the hospital.
A CMC official said Maji was living close to Patuapara on Harish Chatterjee Street.
Several people have died of dengue in Calcutta and the rest of the state this year, but neither the CMC nor the state government has disclosed how many people have died after contracting the mosquito-borne disease.
While public health experts say disclosing data helps in executing public health measures, the state has taken the opposite approach.
At least two persons have died of dengue in Calcutta since the start of the festive season. One of the victims was Mamani Naskar, 45, who lived at New Santoshpur in Jadavpur. She died on October 19 (Panchami).
Metro has reported that Bengal’s premier state-run hospital — SSKM — was a potential breeding ground for mosquitoes. This newspaper found dozens of plastic glasses, styrofoam plates and glass bottles on the terrace of the staff quarters on the campus of the hospital.
All these items can turn into mosquito-breeding sites once water accumulates in them.
The Aedes aegypti mosquito, which transmits the dengue virus, can breed in a spoonful of water. An Aedes egg can develop into an adult in seven to 10 days if the water remains undisturbed, said an entomologist.
Calcutta’s deputy mayor Atin Ghosh, who also heads the CMC’s health department, led a vector-control drive at the hospital earlier this month.
Ghosh expressed concern at the sight of plastic sheets that were hanging over informal settlements on the hospital campus. The sheets, he said, could host mosquito-breeding sites.
Another young doctor from the city passed away in September after contracting dengue. The 28-year-old ophthalmologist, who was posted at the Regional Institute
of Opthalmology on the Calcutta Medical College campus, lived in Jadavpur’s Shahidnagar.
Debadyuti Chatterjee, the doctor, underwent a kidney transplant in 2013, after he was diagnosed with an auto-immune disorder that damaged his kidney.