At least 58 people, many of them children, have died in the worst-hit Firozabad district alone.
An outbreak of dengue fever has been suspected of killing dozens of people in the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh since early September, as authorities launch a campaign to destroy mosquito breeding grounds. .
Dinesh Kumar Premi, the chief medical officer of Firozabad, the hardest-hit district in the country’s most populous state, told Reuters news agency that 58 people, many of them children, had died in his district alone, fearing that Uttar Pradesh is in the middle of its worst dengue outbreak in years.
“We are taking preventative measures and 95 health camps in the district have been operating to contain the spread of this fever,” Premi said.
A government official said, on condition of anonymity, that many children could have died when their poor parents first took them to fake doctors, or vests, before their condition worsened.
Although mosquito-borne dengue is the suspected cause of the outbreak of deadly viral fever in Uttar Pradesh, in only three cases has it been confirmed to be the cause of death.
But an audit is underway to determine if he is to blame for more, said Ved Vrat Singh, Uttar Pradesh’s top public health official.
Firozabad authorities have formed teams to check for clogs in homes and fumigate at-risk areas, while they have also released thousands of Gambusia, or mosquitofish, into bodies of water to eat mosquito larvae.
Dengue deaths nationwide fell to a 56-year low last year. Uttar Pradesh, home to nearly 220 million people, reported 42 deaths from dengue in 2016, the highest since 2015.