Vector-borne infestation: Dengue patients’ count breaks record for year 2017

At least 224 admitted in govt hospitals, 300 in private health facilities

RAWALPINDI: The dengue infestation threat in Rawalpindi and Islamabad has intensified, with the number of patients topping the last year count.

According to data of the state-run hospitals, currently the number of dengue patients in the twin cities has increased to 224, while in the previous year this number was at 215 in mid-October.

This number is of government hospitals while the number of dengue patients in private hospitals has crossed 300, sources said.

Health department sources said that the government hospitals were running out of space in the dengue wards.

Being a contagious disease, dengue patients were kept in quarantine wards with beds covered with mosquito nettings. However, the inflow of infected people was putting a strain on meagre resources of government hospitals, sources said.

In view of the alarming situation, the health department has declared dengue emergency in the state-run healthcare facilities.

Holy Family Hospital administration has allocated another quarantine ward for dengue patients.

The profiles of the patients registered in state-run Allied Hospitals show that dengue infected people were coming from Taxila, Gujjar Khan and Kahuta.

Health officers said that the vector borne disease peaks till end of November. They said that a spell of rain will end the dengue epidemic, because the mosquito causing this disease does not survive in cold temperature.

Unarmed against mosquitoes

All spray pumps available with the district health department for killing dengue mosquitoes have become useless. Health officers have borrowed spray guns from government schools of the district.

Deputy Commissioner Umer Jahangir reprimanded health officers in an anti-dengue meeting for failing to deliver an anti-mosquito spray operation.

Officials told the meeting that they had run out of spray pumps and those left had become useless and for that reason dengue spray had been halted. DC Umer accepting the health officials request, issued a circular to district educational officer instructing them to lend dengue spray equipment present in schools to the health department.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 20^th, 2018.