Scanty nightwear to blame for rise in dengue cases

The latest claim by civic health officials can certainly make the Weird Science section of a medical journal After coming under attack for increasing number of dengue patients in the city Pune Municipal Corporation seems to have got to the bottom of the problem where it saw that there werenrsquot enough clothes covering Puneites which was making them susceptible to be feasted upon by mosquitoes mdash the carrier of the diseaseu00a0 Representational pic According to PMC officials people who expose a lot of their body while sleeping are falling prey to dengue And since men choose to be less encumbered by clothing while hitting the sack it is making them vulnerable to bites by Aedes aegypti the mosquito responsible for inflicting dengue Maximum exposure They corroborated this theory by citing statistics available with them about dengue which say more men than women have contracted it see box Fact Check ldquoIf we consider the data with us now most dengue patients are male And if we consider the majority of these males they have been infected with dengue due to more exposure of skin Common guidelines to prevent dengue include that people cover themselves fully while sleeping Fight the bite Fumigation is one of the ways to get rid of breeding grounds But men wear less clothes while sleeping and that may be the reason that more of them have been affected than womenrdquo said Dr Shyam Satpute assistant medical officer of health PMC who is also in charge of the vectorborne disease control department of PMC Fact Check 451 Number of total dengue cases recorded within city limits since January 302 No of cases reported among men 149 No of cases reported among femalesu00a0 Action taken All said and done the civic authority is indeed trying to rein in dengue PMC has identified a total of 70075 mosquito breeding spots Of this 30901 are fixed and 39174 temporaryu00a0The corporation also discovered that most cases are from Warje area ldquoMost ongoing construction sites are in Warje so a majority of the cases have been reported from there We have also initiated strict action against the builders responsible for unhygienic site conditions by filing cases against themrdquo said Dr S S Ambekar of state health department which is helping out the PMC u00a0Since January PMC has filed 25 cases against builders in the city in view of unclean sites Experts junk PMC claim Medical experts however discredited the PMCrsquos reasoning saying Aedes aegypti mosquito which causes dengue is active during day not night Doctors also said that to be able to proffer such a ldquogeneral statementrdquo as valid cause there needed to be a clinical survey to find out if any such possibility mdash less clothes causing dengue mdash exists ldquoThere is no survey that concludes males are more prone to dengue And since Aedes bites in daytime wearing less clothing during night is not an issue If say those exposed to the outside environment due to the nature of their profession are contracting dengue then there is a probability that males working outdoors are getting infected more than housewives but no such survey has happened eitherrdquo said D B Kadam head of department medicine Sassoon Hospital Kadam said that data was needed before arriving at any conclusion ldquoThere is need of a survey on subclinical infections which may give some insight that can shed light on the matterrdquo he addedu00a0