Officials fear sackings for dengue control failure

DCO warns health officials to up their game or lose their jobs.

LAHORE: The city’s health officials are under pressure to perform as the district coordination officer (DCO) has warned that there will be further suspensions if the dengue epidemic is not brought under control.

Dr Fayyaz Ranjha was recently suspended as the executive district officer (Health) for leading what the Punjab government judged to be an ineffectual campaign against the mosquitoes that spread the virus.

“Everyone is under pressure as more dengue cases have occurred in Lahore than last year, when just 39 were reported,” a senior officer in the district health department told The Express Tribune.

“The added urgency from this DCO means that people will have to make sure that they perform their tasks competently,” a district officer said.

Another district officer said the Punjab government had set a target of two weeks for the completion of an insecticide spraying campaign covering all of Lahore, but the city was too big and they didn’t have enough staff.

The health official said the spread of the dengue virus could be largely put down to public ignorance about the disease. “Lahore has always had a dengue problem but before there wasn’t much awareness so people would go to the doctor thinking it was some other ailment,” he said.

He said dengue was easily preventable if people took basic precautions such as keeping insecticide in the house to kill mosquitoes. “Frankly speaking, the people forget. This is a lesson,” he said. He said a major factor in this year’s epidemic was desert coolers, which provide an ideal environment for breeding mosquitoes. Water coolers were not a problem because they were usually properly secured and cemented.

The official said the government needed to take a more integrated approach to the issue and make sure departments were not working at cross purposes. For example, the Parks and Horticulture Authority was still watering the city’s parks during this season, which increased the risk of exposure to dengue for visitors to the parks.

He said another aspect of the disease was the economic cost in terms of the number of work hours missed. Dengue causes a painful fever and low platelet count from which can take two weeks to recover, he said.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 26^th, 2010.