Dengue took the lives of four members of a tribal family in Telangana within a space of 24 days, 25-year-old Gudimalla Soni was the last one from the family to succumb to the disease at a private hospital in Hyderabad on Wednesday evening– a day after she gave birth to a boy and two days after she lost her 6-year old daughter to the virus.
Soni’s two day old son is also suffering from fever and is currently under observation in an incubator.
The unfortunate turn of events started with Soni losing her 30-year-old husband Gudimalla Rajagattu to dengue on October 6. Soni and her husband lived in Sri Sri Nagar colony in Mancherial town, where Rajagattu taught at a private school. Rajagattu passed away despite receiving treatment at a Karimnagar hospital for five days.
14 days later, even before the family members could recover from the loss of the only breadwinner, Rajagattu’s grandfather Lingiah (70) too succumbed to the disease spread by mosquito bites.
Soni’s daughter Sri Varshini was the next to go while undergoing treatment in Mancherial on October 27.
“By that time, Soni, who was in her ninth-month of pregnancy, had also been diagnosed with dengue. Within hours of her daughter’s death, Soni was shifted to Hyderabad for treatment where she died on Wednesday after delivering the baby boy,” her relative told reporters.
The 24-day long ordeal wiped out most of the Rajagattu family, leaving behind two orphaned kids, seven year old Sri Vikas and the two-day old infant.
The Telangana high court had last week admonished the state government for not keeping an official record of the dengue-deaths.
The court had pulled up state chief secretary SK Joshi and officials of the health and municipal departments for failure to contain the mosquito menace and failure to create mass awareness over dengue.
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