Public health: CM orders anti-dengue measures at bus route

Shahbaz reviews govt strategy to fight disease in monsoon season.

LAHORE:

Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif has directed officials to ensure that there is no let-up in measures to control the dengue mosquito population during the Eid holidays, according to a press release.

At a meeting with government officials and the heads of institutions involved in the anti-dengue effort on Wednesday, the chief minister also ordered that special attention be paid to the route of the Metro Bus Project.

The chief minister said that the situation appeared to be under control and there was currently not a single dengue patient in any Punjab hospital.

However, he warned the institutions to remain alert, saying that action would be taken against lax officials.

“In view of the experience of last year, there is no room for error this year. Therefore, all concerned departments ought to remain at maximum alert,” he said. “The preventive system should operate automatically, while elected representatives and heads of government institutions ought to ... remove any shortcoming found anywhere in this regard.”

Sharif also told off some officials for making unsatisfactory arrangements, said the press release, but it did not say which.

The chief minister said sanitation at private schools must be checked by the end of the Eid holidays, before they reopen for classes. He said an awareness campaign of preventive measures against dengue should be launched. Officials must continue to register tyre shops and shred any tyres left out in the open, since they can serve as ideal breeding grounds for dengue mosquitoes after rain, he said.

Special attention should be paid to the draining of water from graveyards, parks, junkyards and low-lying areas.

He said that a warehouse would be constructed for the storage of all anti-dengue instruments. He said that women health workers should be trained and given honoraria.

The chief minister said that construction sites offered many places for mosquitoes to breed, so officials must check such areas and remove any debris. He said that the dengue mosquito was very active in this season so all institutions must work together to eliminate its breeding grounds.

He said indoor and outdoor vector surveillance must be accelerated and third party validation for vector surveillance should be made more effective.

He said sanitation arrangements at most cooperative housing societies were unsatisfactory and directed the cooperatives secretary to take up the issue. He directed waste management officials to remove garbage from all empty plots.

Sharif set up a committee headed by MPA Chaudhry Shahbaz to come up with a strategy for the quick drainage of rainwater. He directed Education Minister Mujtaba Shujaur Rehman to act in response to reports of dengue mosquito larvae being detected in Shalimar Town.

CM’s Special Assistant on Health Khawaja Salman Rafique, secretaries of various departments, the Lahore commissioner and the district coordination officer also attended the meeting.

Published in The Express Tribune, August 16^th, 2012.