5-Year-Old Dies Of Dengue After Waiting 4 Hours To Be Admitted

A five-year-old girl died of dengue fever after she was made to wait for four hours to be admitted to a hospital.

Savanya Gupta, 5, was waiting to be admitted to Firozabad Medical College in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh on Monday afternoon after she developed a high fever and a dropping platelet count. The girl was brought to the hospital around 8 a.m. but she was only admitted around noon. The child was declared dead soon after being admitted, NDTV reported.

“We got her to the hospital around 8 a.m. We told the hospital staff about her condition but they did nothing. We waited for four hours to get her admitted,” the child’s father, Ajit Gupta, told The Times of India. “She died in front of me. She would have been fine had she got treatment on time.”

The hospital located in Firozabad city, 50 kilometers from Agra, said that it is yet to receive a formal complaint about the death of a patient while awaiting treatment, the report said. The hospital administration also announced that it will be adding beds to meet the increasing demand.

“We’ve received no formal complaint about a patient dying while waiting for treatment. We are increasing the number of beds to accommodate the increasing number of patients,” Hansraj Singh, chief medical superintendent of Firozabad Medical College, told the daily.

Savanya is one of the 88 children who have died of dengue in Firozabad, where approximately 12,000 people have become bedridden after contracting the viral fever.

A team of India’s National Center for Disease Control (NCDC) identified a dengue outbreak in Firozabad district last week. Authorities later launched widespread efforts of fogging and draining out stagnant water to curb the spread of the dengue fever. However, deaths still continue.

"We are carrying out the door-to-door surveys as per the instructions of Uttar Pradesh health minister Jai Pratap Singh and all the suspect cases are being immediately treated," Chief Medical Officer Arun Kumar Srivastava said, according to the Hindustan Times.

The dengue fever outbreak is suspected of killing dozens of people in Uttar Pradesh since the beginning of September, raising fears that the state may see one of the worst outbreaks in years.

"We are taking preventive measures and 95 health camps across the district have been operating in order to contain the spread of this fever," Firozabad chief medical officer Dinesh Kumar Premi told Reuters.