Spread of dengue at Paurai Bazar of Rautahat has claimed one life and affected one to three members of every household in the settlement over past one week.

Health officials confirmed that the mosquito-borne disease has affected every household in Paurai Bazar, with increasing number of people suffering from common dengue symptoms like fever, headache, body-ache and nausea.  

Rajesh Sah, a local health worker, said 31-year-old Motilal Gole died of dengue while undergoing treatment at Bharatpur Hospital in Chitwan a week ago. 

“Gole’s death has caused panic among the people of Paurai Bazar because there has not been a proper medical intervention to treat the sick,” Sah said, adding that the authorities must immediately deploy a team of health experts to treat the sick people. 

Puja Shrestha, chief of Paurai Health Post, said a recent laboratory test had confirmed dengue among scores of people in Paurai Bazar.   

“The contagion is serious indeed. We have cases of entire family members who have been infected,” she said.

Meanwhile, the District Health Office (DHO) has started to destroy mosquito larvae in the affected area in a bid to contain dengue spread.  

Nandeshwor Chaudhary, vector controller officer at the DHO, said though they were trying to neutralise the risk of disease spread, the infected people were still in need of proper medical attention.

“The numbers of sick people are too high, so we have asked the centre to deploy a team of health experts to treat them,” Chaudhary said.  

Dengue is an infectious disease usually contracted from mosquitoes belonging to the Aedes Aegypti genus. High fever, head and body ache, itchiness, sore throat, and redness of the eyes are the common symptoms of the disease. The disease can be fatal if it is not treated on time.