Physicians blame Health Dept for dengue epidemic

Health Dept has failed to control the the country’s worst epidemic, deliberately understated total patients affected.


Abdul Manan October 27, 2010

LAHORE: Speakers at a seminar, on Tuesday, said that the Punjab Health Department had failed miserably in controlling the outbreak of the dengue virus across the province and primarily in Lahore. They called the outbreak the country’s worst epidemic, adding that healthcare officials had deliberately understated the number of patients affected and that number was increasing at an alarming rate. They said patients suffering from dengue were visiting both the private and public health facilities in the thousands as opposed to the numbers registered by the Health Department.

The seminar, “Dengue Awareness Programme for Family Physicians,” was organised at the Allama Iqbal Medical College (AIMC) auditorium. The seminar was attended by a large number of family physicians from across the province including AIMC principal Prof Javed Akram, Pakistan Academy of Family Physicians president Dr Tariq Mahmood Mian, Prof Naheed Humayun Sheikh, Dr Asif Humayun and other senior doctors of the Jinnah Hospital.

Dr Mian, while addressing the seminar, said that the Health Department had concealed the number of dengue sufferers to mislead the Punjab government. He said the number of patients visiting private hospitals and clinics was many times higher than the figures registered by healthcare authorities and this was a highly condemnable act.

He said that currently 100,000 family physicians were running clinics across the province, including 10,000 in Lahore alone.

“Each family physician was attending, daily, to 40 to 50 patients suffering from dengue at their clinics,” he said.

Dr Mian said it was the country’s worst dengue outbreak, adding the epidemic started from Jhang and Faisalabad districts and later spread to other districts of the province.

In Lahore, he said, the Mughalpura Railway Workshop was the origin of the virus’s outbreak. The health authorities had taken no preventive measures to control the spread of the virus as no fumigation campaign was launched in the affected areas which resulted in the large-scale outbreak of the disease, he said.

Dr Mian said he was attending to some 200 patients at his clinic in Lahore daily. He said that Dr Fayyaz Ranjha’s suspension for his failure in controlling the dengue virus was a tactic calculated to divert the attention of the Punjab government from the actual issue of the wide scale outbreak of the virus.

He added that the government was employing an old method of spray which was not effective in eradicating the dengue mosquito. Prof Akram said dengue was a global health problem.

He said population growth, poor housing planning, lack of sanitation and health facilities, illiteracy and ignorance amongst people were also the causes of the rapid increase in dengue cases.

He said that people must adopt precautionary measures and stop storing water for more than one day.

He also said stored water must be changed daily to halt the breeding of mosquitoes.

Prof Akram said that initially Jinnah Hospital had set up a 10-bed dengue ward which quickly increased to 20 beds and now 30 beds had been added due to the huge influx of patients.

All of the beds, he said, were occupied at the moment. He said treatment facilities along with diagnostics were being provided free of cost on the direction of Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 27th, 2010.

COMMENTS

Replying to X

Comments are moderated and generally will be posted if they are on-topic and not abusive.

For more information, please see our Comments FAQ