Power outages seen as obstructing treatment

Experts demand that hospitals be exempted from load shedding.

LAHORE:

Doctors and health officials have raised concern that excessive power outages in the city are damaging the machinery used in platelet separation and hurting efforts against the disease.

Some of them have requested the authorities concerned that the city, or at least hospitals treating dengue fever patients, be exempted from load shedding. They said many people diagnosed with dengue fever reported that they had been sleeping on roofs owing to excessive power outages.

A press conference in this regard was addressed by medical superintendents of several teaching hospitals in the city on Wednesday.

King Edward Medical University Vice Chancellor Prof Asad Aslam said load shedding at hospitals was causing delays in treatment of several patients.

Post-graduate Medical Institute principal Prof Tariq Salahuddin demanded that at least hospitals should be exempted from load shedding.  He said dengue fever was a relatively new disease in the country and that extensive research was needed on how best to treat it.

He said several measures had already been adopted in light of the recommendations by the team of Sri Lankan experts. He said High Dependency Units had been set up at all public hospitals to treat dengue fever patients.

Fatima Jinnah Medical College Principal Prof Rakhshanda Rahman said excessive outages were lowering the chances of surviving for critical patients’ admitted to the intensive care units (ICUs) in public hospitals. She demanded that there should be no load shedding in the city in October.  She said all people suffering from fever for more than three days should get their blood tested for dengue.

Health Secretary Jehanzeb Khan said senior consultants had been asked to keep track of treatment of dengue fever patients. He said that taking notes on their condition twice a day had been made mandatory for the doctors treating them.

Talking about the fumigation campaign, Agriculture Secretary Arif Nadeem said number of fogging machines in each town had been increased from two to 25.

He said over the last 24 hours 530 more patients and four deaths were reported in the province.

As many as 459 patients belonged to Lahore. Three of the four deaths were reported in Lahore, increasing the death toll in the city to 105. The deceased were identified as Fiaz, Gulzar Bibi and Irshad. The latter two died at Mayo Hospital.

The number of dengue fever patients in the province documented this year has reached 11,584, with 10,244 of these in Lahore. Nadeem said 9,787 people have recovered from the disease and 1,113 are under treatment at various hospitals.

Meanwhile, Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif chaired a meeting to review the steps taken for eradication of mosquitoes causing dengue fever from the city.

Sharif said insecticide from India and fogging machines from Germany had reached the city and would soon be handed over to towns administrations.

Members of national and provincial assemblies from the city, secretaries of various government departments and the head of the Sri Lankan experts’ team were present on the occasion. Lahore Commissioner said a campaign for removal of solid waste from the city was underway and that 38,000 metric tons of waste would be lifted by October 14.

Published in The Express Tribune, September 29^th, 2011.