CHENNAI: A 31-year-old patient died of suspected hemorrhagic fever – a communicable mosquito-borne disease at Deepam Hospital in Tambaram on Wednesday.

"The patient, a resident of Chrompet, who came to the hospital with a history of high fever for nearly three days, was in a state of shock during the admission. She was on ventilator support for nearly three hours, but did not recover," said Dr T N Ravishankar, who heads the hospital. At 11 pm, the hospital declared her dead after a respiratory failure due to suspected dengue.

"She had very high fever and her blood platelet count was very low. The pulse and blood pressure were falling. These are classic clinical symptoms of dengue. However, we needed to confirm this through a blood test, result of which would be ready only after six days," he said. The hospital has informed the local municipal authorities about the suspicion that it could be a case of dengue death.

Last week, at least four women from the Institute of Mental Health died due to diahorrea after allegedly drinking stagnant rain water in the hospital premises.

Almost simultaneously, the Chennai Corporation issued red corner notices advising people to drink even packaged drinking water only after boiling. Though health officials say there has been no increase in water or mosquito-borne diseases within the city, the patient flow at hospitals and the number of samples for blood tests in laboratories have gone up considerably.

With most of the city's streets remaining inundated for more than three days, doctors have cautioned about the growing risk of leptospirosis or 'rat fever'. The Government General Hospital – city's premier government hospital — had at least 150 cases of leptospirosis in November. At least 36 patients were admitted to the hospital.

"There have been no deaths in the hospital. But most patients come to the hospital late. They come in with acute renal failure. In most of the cases, the patients' condition can be reversed before they slip into the chronic stage. Some even develop blood poisoning," said a doctor in the department of general medicine at the Government General Hospital.

Doctors in private hospitals say there is a 40% increase in the number of out-patients. "We work extra hours to see all the patients. Many of them come with complaints of viral fever. But in some cases, the fever continues to be high even after three days. There has been a definite increase in Typhoid, too. We send samples of several patients for tests for dengue, malaria and leptospirosis daily," says Dr Ramagopalan, who has his own clinic at West Mambalam.