Monsoon Related Illnesses

Good evening!

I am Dr. Hardik Thakkar a MD physician speaking from Mumbai. Today I will be talking about monsoon-related illnesses. As we all know these are the monsoon months going on all over India and we have a lot of water coming in these four months of the year. As a result of water logging in many areas, it is a very good breeding house, the breeding ground for mosquitoes and a lot of mosquito-borne illnesses are very prevalent during that time. Most common monsoon-related illnesses are malaria and dengue fever. However these are the 3 common fevers that we see and the most striking feature of these diseases is a drop in the platelet count. So as the platelet count drops what happens is that the person complaints of rashes and if the count drops even further the patient may develop hemorrhage.

The blood does not clot in the body. One of the most dreaded complications of malaria, dengue and leptospirosis fever is called ARDS, So what happens here is there is a fluid accumulation and sometimes even blood in lungs. As a result the person cannot breathe. The oxygen exchange does not happen and he starts getting breathless. Such patients are then required to have ventilator supporter in the ICU. This is the most dreaded complication and not everybody survives successfully.

Hence, it is very important for all the patients who have symptoms of fever during the monsoon month to report to the doctor as soon as possible. So that you can be diagnosed in time and you do not develop such complications. We also have a concept of chemo-profile access where you can take a medicine to protect yourself from the disease. For example, for leptospirosis. If you live in an area where there is an epidemic of leptospirosis, we can give you doxycycline that can protect you from getting leptospirosis to begin with. For more details about this and treatment modalities you can reach me at my clinic or for an online consultation you can interact with me on the lybrate profile which you can reach through Lybrate.com 

Thank you very much!