Report on a Dengue Outbreak

Lead with the current position — cases, hospitals, the worst-affected areas — then explain how dengue spreads, what the symptoms are, what the city corporations are doing and what households can do. Health reports must attribute numbers to a named source rather than stating them flatly.

The question: Write a report on the outbreak of dengue fever in your city.

The format

Lead with the current position

Cases, hospitals and the week — in the first sentence, attributed to the health directorate. A dengue report without a figure at the top has buried its own news.

• Attribute every number.
• Say whether the figure is the highest of the season.
• 🚨 Do not open with how dengue spreads.

Show the pressure, not the disease

The second paragraph is about beds, wards and corridors — the visible consequence. Name two hospitals and say what doctors there report.

• One clinical detail only, and only if relevant to the news.
• Name real hospitals in the right city.

Control measures, then the expert view

Close with what the city corporations are doing and what entomologists say about whether it works. The disagreement is the most reportable thing in the story.

• Attribute the criticism to entomologists.
• ⚠️ Do not recommend anything in your own voice.

Model answer

Model answer (about 200 words)

Dengue cases climb as hospitals fill in capital

Staff Correspondent

Dhaka, 5 September: Hospitals in the capital admitted a sharply higher number of dengue patients last week, with the health directorate reporting the highest weekly figure of the season so far.

Doctors at three government hospitals said wards set aside for dengue were full by the middle of the week and that additional beds had been arranged in corridors. Mugda Medical College Hospital and Shaheed Suhrawardy Medical College Hospital were among those reporting the heaviest pressure. Physicians said a significant proportion of this year's patients were presenting with the more dangerous forms of the disease, in which blood pressure falls suddenly.

"People are coming late, on the fourth or fifth day," a medicine consultant at Mugda told this correspondent. "That is when it becomes difficult."

Both city corporations said mosquito control drives were continuing, with fines imposed on households and construction sites where larvae were found. Entomologists have said, however, that drives conducted after the season begins have limited effect, and that clearing standing water before the monsoon is the only measure that reduces the following year's outbreak.

What earns and loses marks

• Attribute every figure to the health directorate or a named hospital. Unattributed case numbers are the single clearest sign of an invented health report.
• Put the numbers in the first sentence. A news report leads with how many, where and when; anything else in the opening line is an essay opening in disguise.
• 🚨 Keep yourself out of it. “We should all be careful on the roads” is a sentence from a composition and loses the register mark immediately.
• Attribute every claim you could not have witnessed. Unattributed figures are the clearest sign of an invented report.
• About 180 to 220 words in four short paragraphs is the right length; newspaper paragraphs are short by convention.