Kolkata: A boy who died at a state-run hospital on Monday was suffering from dengue, making it the first death in the city due to the disease, a West Bengal Heath Department official said.
"We have received the blood test report which suggested that he had tested positive for dengue," West Bengal Health Services Director Biswaranjan Satpathy said.
The 14-year-old boy, a resident of Garia in the city, had been suffering from high fever since August 16 and was admitted at the Bangur Hospital on August 28.
He died on September 1 and the initial report had suggested pneumonia as the cause of his death.
Satpathy, however, dismissed that another youth had died of the disease at the state-run Nil Ratan Sarkar Medical College and Hospital during the day.
"The patient was suffering from aplastic anaemia. He used to visit NRS for blood transfusions. In aplastic anaemia, the platelet count gets low. So the patient's dengue IgM may have come out as positive. But it was surely not a death because of dengue," he explained.
