AHMEDABAD: Parents beware. This year more than 42% of those detected with dengue infections were children below 15 years of age. If you have been careless at home when it comes to vector control or have generally overlooked your kid’s schools mosquito control precautions, you better take note. This year 4,195 dengue cases have been registered in the city, till November 30.A detailed study of 6,434 dengue cases by Community Medicine Department of BJ Medical College, from 2010 to 2016, revealed that the dengue incidence was 16.3 per lakh population and the maximum incidence rate (26.2) was seen in children up to the age of 14 years, followed by 15-44 years where the incidence rate was 17.3 per lakh population. The study also revealed that the most common dengue virus serotype that was detected in the city was serotype-2, which happens to be a lethal dengue strain.The study was conducted to know the trend and epidemiological profile of dengue cases and deaths. Another startling fact revealed in the report was that nearly 58% of deaths registered between 2010 and 2016 were of children aged up to 14 years.A substantial increase in the dengue incidence was seen in the years 2015 and 2016. “Case fatality rate because of dengue was less than 1% while the proportion of deaths was maximum (57.89%) in children up to the age of 14 years,” the study states.This year, some 706 of the 4,000-odd dengue cases registered were that of children aged between 9 to 14 years. A senior official in the Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation (AMC) health department said, “In many cases we have found that schools have been careless with vector control measures and since children spend a lot of their time there, they are more likely to be bitten by Aedes aegypti mosquitos.”