Dengue apprehensions: DHA, Cantt residents still at ‘greater’ risk

Residents rush to hospitals at the slightest sign.

LAHORE:

A recent statistic about dengue cases in Defence Housing Authority (DHA) by the Health Director General Dr Chaudhry Muhammad Aslam has caused widespread concern amongst DHA residents.

“Sixty-five per cent of the dengue cases in Lahore are from a few posh localities of the city including Defence,” he said earlier in September.

(Read: Dengue most active in posh areas)

In a combined meeting conducted by Cantonment and DHA administrations on Sunday, Dr Aslam said, “Forty per cent of these cases belong to either Defence or Cantt.”

Health experts have blamed the large number of parks and green belts in the area with stagnant water as prime factors, which has created panic amongst the residents of the area who are now heading, in large numbers, to get dengue tests even with the slightest of symptoms.

The Shaukat Khanum collection centre management in DHA Phase-I said that as many as 300 dengue diagnostic tests are conducted daily. Another Shaukat Khanum collection centre on DHA’s Main Boulevard also claimed to be receiving more than 100 blood samples everyday.

A lab assistant at one of the centres said that the number was besides the large number of people getting free tests at dengue camps set up by the Health Department.

The Health Department has set up four camps in Defence. Each camp reported to have tested more than 500 people for dengue within the first 24 hours of being set up.

Hospitals in DHA have also reported an increasing number of patients over the last couple of weeks. Special dengue wards have been set up at National Hospital and Adil Hospital. Mishaal, a resident of DHA who recently recovered from dengue, said that initially the hospitals were not admitting her saying that her condition was not that serious. She was later admitted to a hospital after her platelet count dropped to 40,000 against the normal 150,000.

“I was shifted to the cardiac ward since there was no space in the hospital’s dengue ward,” she said. Due to people swarming in the emergency wards, the hospital management had no option but to admit only those with critical condition, she said.

Management at the National Hospital dengue ward said that at least four to five dengue patients were admitted to the hospital everyday. The wards were short of space since the treatment lasted from five days to a week depending on the severity of the case, they said.



Published in The Express Tribune, September 22^nd, 2011.