The Public Health Engineering Department started a 10-day operation against the dengue virus on Tuesday.
According to a department official, the operation had to be started before the peak season for the disease owing to the unpredictable changes in the weather, which were encouraging the breeding of the mosquitoes that carry the virus.
“The seasonal changes are unexpected,” Dr Tariq Ramazan, a public health district officer. “We have instituted a city-wide plan to ensure that the breeding mosquitoes are unable to survive before the peak season for the virus arrives between August and October,” he added. Dr Ramazan said that the dengue virus control, instituted as a round-the-year campaign, used indoor residual spray (IRS) and thermal fogging to eliminate the mosquitoes.
He said that the department was facing constraints regarding the budget. He said he had met with the DCO, who allocated Rs7.8 million to carry the campaign through the rest of the year.
The Public Health Engineering Department has estimated the cost of the 10-day operation against dengue virus at Rs150,000 per day, including the cost of insecticide and petrol oil lubricant for thermal fogging.
Dr Ramazan said that the department was also facing transport issues. The Public Health Engineering Department, he said, did not have its own vehicles to carry the thermal fogging equipment and had to borrow them from other departments.
He said that it was not the first time the department was facing this issue.
“Transport has always been a challenge, but the government found ways to work around it. Inspectors are assigned towns to supervise the fumigation process effectively,” he said.
Reported cases
Dr Ramazan told The Express Tribune that out of the five cases reported in the city, only one had been confirmed.
He said the patient was a King Edward Medical College student who had been affected during a stay in Rawalpindi. He had carried the virus to Lahore.
He hoped that the entire city would be fumigated in the 10 days of the campaign.
Department report for DCO
A Public Health Engineering Department report, prepared for the DCO, said that the department had fumigated 28,123 houses, 1,336 schools and 3,673 mosques in Lahore with IRS spray since December 2010. It stated that six rounds of fogging had been completed and a seventh round was underway, covering 1,003 ditches and 89 drains in each round.
The effects of the sprays on human health were also discussed in th+e report. It said that the presence of insecticide and diesel in the spray solvent had hazardous effects on asthma patients. People were therefore advised to stay inside while their area was being sprayed. The IRS sprays, however, were harmless, it said.
Published in The Express Tribune, April 20th, 2011.
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