ISLAMABAD/ LAHORE:
With the number of confirmed dengue fever patients rising to 1,936 across the country – four of whom have died – health authorities are desperately struggling to overcome the epidemic, according to statistics released by the National Institute of Health (NIH) on Tuesday.
There have been 16 confirmed cases of dengue, including one death, in Islamabad; whereas Punjab has seen 1,726 confirmed cases, including one fatality, in Lahore. Rawalpindi has had 13 confirmed cases with no fatalities. Sindh and Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa have 170 and seven cases respectively, including one death in Karachi and one in Nowshera, while four cases have been reported in Azad Jammu and Kashmir.
According to health experts the main reason behind dengue outbreak in Pakistan every year is the lack of an in-depth study on the subject. Talking to The Express Tribune on condition of anonymity, officials dealing with the infection revealed that dengue infection has gotten out of the Punjab government’s control because by assuming dengue would not spread in 2011, the government took no precautionary measures.
A senior official said that past occurrence indicated that dengue would spread every alternate year, and because it hit Punjab, particularly Lahore in 2010, it was expected to recur in 2012.
“The outbreak of dengue this year was unexpected. The awareness and prevention campaign in Lahore kicked off quite late. Other than that, a lack of monitoring systems to keep a check on the teams responsible for spraying the city [for prevention] resulted in the use of ineffective chemicals which were unable to destroy the breeding ground of mosquitoes carrying dengue,” he said.
According to the data compiled by the health department, 1,816 cases of dengue have been reported in Punjab so far, of which over 1,600 were reported in Lahore alone. On Tuesday, 86 additional cases of dengue were reported in Punjab, including 75 in Lahore.
A World Health Organisation (WHO) adviser Dr Muhammad Aslam Khan said, “I have long been saying that these sprays cannot kill dengue. Officials, however, don’t want to let go the idea of using anti-mosquito sprays because there are better opportunities for misappropriation in this process. Fact is, you have to indentify and then clean the places where mosquitoes carrying dengue lay eggs.”
The unexpected outbreak of dengue this year suggested that the virus is growing stronger and proper research should be carried out to seek ways to eradicate it, said Mayo Hospital and King Edward Medical University Microbiology Diagnostic and Research Lab Infection Control Officer Dr Tayyba Ijaz.
“It has become an endemic now. We need to have a disease-tracking system along with an early-warning system. We have no virus culture lab, which is why we can’t make a vaccine for it,” she added.
All advertisements regarding the prevention of dengue being published on behalf of the Punjab government currently are completely misleading, said a senior doctor requesting anonymity. They allege that all public health institutions are equipped with complete diagnostic and treatment facilities, which is completely untrue, he added.
Published in The Express Tribune, September 7th, 2011.
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The collective consciousness of a nation can be easily assessed from it´s social hygiene and traffic behaviour.
The pestilential "Ganda Naala", a "Cesspool lake" right through the posh residential areas of Lahore, reflects our national character(lessness). Many of the diseases like Malaria, Hepatitis, HIV or Dengue are self-made social disasters similar to the barbarous social violence against minorities which is an accepted social norm.