2 city school students succumb to dengue within 10 hours

Two senior students of Spring Dale College, Indira Nagar branch, succumbed to suspected dengue fever within a span of 10 hours.

While Sanchari, a student of class 11, succumbed to fever at 6 pm on Thursday, Yash Srivastava of class 10 passed away at 4 am on Friday.

The school held a condolence meet on Friday, after which it closed for the day and the weekend. Talking to HT, director Rita Singh said the school would resume from Monday.

“We held a condolence meet for the departed souls and decided to close the school after that. Parents were phoned and asked to collect their wards. As we have a five-day-week, normal work will resume from Monday,” she said. Speaking about the tragic loss of young lives, she said, “We are extremely saddened that we lost two of our students. Yash was a resident of sector 18 Indira Nagar while Sanchari stayed at Sarvodaya Nagar colony.

Both had appeared in the ongoing examinations (till Monday) before they fell sick.”

According to Singh, Sanchari’s father had consulted a doctor after she complained of headache. The doctor had reportedly prescribed medicines and advised the student’s father to “not take her to hospital”. However, the girl’s condition deteriorated rapidly from Tuesday onwards. Yash, who breathed his last at the King George’s Medical University here, had a sharp fall in platelet count (from 1.5 lakh to 8,000) within a period of 3 to 4 days, informed Singh. “It’s an unbearable loss for the families as well as for the school. We are all in a state of shock,” she added. The school claimed that it had gone for “regular spraying” as a precaution against dengue and other vector-borne infections.