DIMAPUR (NAGALAND): The lights above washing the hospital corridor with a dim glow, a frantic Jenpu Rongmei rushed to see his 12-year-old nephew Nina who had been admitted the night before with fever and body ache. He was too late.
The young boy had succumbed to dengue, a neglected tropical disease that was entirely alien to the people of Nagaland till very recently.
A month later, Jenpu remembers every detail of that evening the dull light in the hospital, the faces around, the intense grief and the sheer disbelief that Nina could have gone so soon and so suddenly.
“When I got the news that my nephew was admitted, I thought he would be fine. I didn’t think dengue could be deadly,” Jenpu, who runs the NGO CanYouth to help young people in their education, said.
As the mosquito-borne disease increases its spread, Nina’s untimely death is the latest in the devastating crisis sweeping across the Northeast and other states in India. The spread of the disease…