Major hospitals face shortage of ARVs

KARACHI: Despite frequent stray dog bite cases in the city, Dr Ruth Pfau Civil Hospital Karachi (DRPCHK) is facing acute scarcity of the anti-rabies vaccine (ARV). The patients are told to purchase the vaccine from private stores.

The hospital's data has revealed that around 80 to 120 dog bite cases have been reported daily and its managements confirmed on Monday that the hospital had no ARVs for the last 10 days.

The rabies centre at the DRPCHK is one of the largest centres in the province, where around 100 patients with dog bites are administered ARVs daily and Immunoglobulin to prevent the patients from contracting rabies. Medical superintendent of the hospital, Dr Khadim Hussain Qureshi, confirmed shortage of the vaccine. He said that the supplier of the ARVs offered the hospital the Chinese vaccine but the health secretary did not approve of them.

Earlier, he said, the contractor was asked to supply 1,000 ARVs on an urgent basis.

Dr Qureshi said that dog bite cases were common in the metropolitan and his hospital needed the vaccine immediately.

The city's two other hospitals, the Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Center and the Indus Hospital, have limited stock of the vaccine while the other hospitals across the city have been facing a dearth of the ARVs for last week.

According to the data from various hospitals of the city, over 18,000 dog bite cases have been reported in the last seven months.

Published in The Express Tribune, August 20^th, 2019.