Karnataka health department has issued a circular making it compulsory for all government and private hospitals to report both suspected and deaths resulting out the vector borne diseases like dengue and malaria.

All the hospitals in the state are directed to report to the district surveillance officers of the Bangalore Corporation refereed to as the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) in Karnataka. No private hospital should declare deaths without getting a confirmation by the labs identified by the government, according to the officers from the health department.

Currently, there are 14 labs to carry out the tests and 2 more would be opened up to handle the tests. The state government has intimated that the hospitals should not declare the deaths with the reports disbursed from their in-house labs. It is vital to get a confirmation from the government identified labs.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) has issued standards that dengue cases could only be confirmed by ELISA (Enzyme Linked Immuno-Sorbent Assay) tests. Currently, there are only a handful of hospitals which have this test.

The key reason for the state government to call for a test report from a government approved labs is to ascertain the type of dengue which is proving to be fatal. Based on this the government could work towards controlling the deaths.

There are three types of dengue. First is the common dengue, second is the dengue haemorrhagic and dengue shock syndrome. In the case of dengue haemorrhagic, which is reporting fatal cases, the private labs should not refrain from reporting on this condition.

The health department has also made efforts to report daily and weekly reports on the dengue outbreak pattern, number of patients diagnosed and the survival cases from the disease.