K-P health officials told to ‘immediately’ report 13 diseases

Professionals working in public, private to fill form and dispatch to district centres

PESHAWAR: In a bid to reduce response times to disease outbreaks, the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (K-P) government on Wednesday released a list of 19 critical diseases and directed health professionals to ‘instantly report’ 13 of them.

According to a recent notification, healthcare practitioners have been specifically directed to fill in a form, which lists the diseases, and sends them to the district surveillance centre.

The list includes diseases such as the Crimean Congo Hemorrhagic Fever (CCHF), Acute Watery Diarrhea, dengue fever, dengue hemorrhagic fever, cutaneous leishmaniasis, visceral leishmaniasis, severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), meningococcal meningitis, cutaneous anthrax and HIV/AIDs.

Apart from vaccine preventable diseases (VPDs), other diseases such as tuberculosis, Diphtheria, Pertussis, influenza, pneumonia, measles and hepatitis have also been listed in the form.

The notification stated that every health professional, working in any government or private health care establishment, will be required to ascertain whether the patient was suffering from any of the notified diseases.

It stated that health professional should immediately report such cases to the concerned disease surveillance office or the district disease surveillance centre. These instructions will apply to the public-sector professionals, it added.

It further read that those in charge of pathology services (public or private), where a human pathogenic organism associated with a notified disease is reported, would have to immediately inform the district disease surveillance centre.

“The district disease surveillance centre shall submit the collected information to the provincial centres electronically,” it read, adding that, in case of any emergency, the centre will be required to immediately inform the public health committee chair.

Published in The Express Tribune, September 7^th, 2017.