The district magistrate (DM) of Dehradun, C Ravishankar has assured that there would be no shortage of platelets for dengue patients.

On Friday, the DM made inspection of dengue wards of Government Doon Medical College (GDMC) hospital, Gandhi Centenary Eye hospital and Pandit Deen Dayal Upadhyaya (Coronation) hospital. In the visit, the DM directed the GDMC hospital and Gandhi hospital to write letters to the Director General (DG) of health services for deployment of more staff. The DM directed that number of beds should be increased in these hospitals to cater large flow of patients. For increase of beds the DM said that these hospitals should seek more technicians, staff nurses, ward boys and pharmacists.

Before inspecting these hospitals, the DM summoned Chief Medical Officer (CMO) of Dehradun Dr S K Gupta, district vector borne diseases office Subhash Joshi and Chief Medical Superintendent (CMS) of Gandhi centenary eye hospital Dr B C Ramola.

 In the meeting, he sought the status of the disease in the district and preparation made in the hospitals. In GDMC the dengue ward has 34 beds. Here the DM found that the hospital do not have ELISA reader machine on which he immediately released budget for purchase of this machine.

After GDMC hospital, Ravishankar visited Gandhi centenary eye hospital and Coronation hospitals which have 24 and 4 beds respectively.

The DM said that panic should be avoided on dengue. He advised that people should not insist doctors to administer platelets on the patients. The DM said that it is for the doctors to decide on platelets. He said that the platelets should be administered only when their count falls below 20000 or if there is any internal bleeding.