Dengue control scheme denied funds since 2009

Cell concerned says Health Dept held up requests to release Rs185m.

LAHORE: The Punjab government has not released a single paisa of Rs185 million allocated for a three-year dengue control scheme since it was launched in 2009, The Express Tribune has learnt.

According to documents of the Health Department directorate concerned, the Rs185 million was to be given to the Communicable Diseases Control Programme (CDCP) for the control of dengue in fiscal 2009-10, 2010-11 and 2011-12, but the Health Department did not forward requests for funding to the Finance Department.

Pakistan is currently in the midst of a major dengue outbreak, particularly in Lahore where there have been close to 2,000 reported cases. A CDCP official said though the provincial government had now given the CDCP Rs80 million in emergency funding to combat dengue, the damage had been done. “If the government had released the allocated funds for the last two fiscal years, the outbreak could have been stopped,” he said.

According to the documents, the CDCP sent a summary to the Health Department last year seeking the release of Rs 55 million for dengue control.

Instead, the Health Department sent a summary for the release of Rs20 million to the Finance Department, said the official. That sum has still not been deposited in the CDCP account, he added.

The CDCP also sent the Health Department a summary seeking the release of all the Rs185 million this fiscal year, but the department had not forwarded the proposal to the Finance Department, he said.

The official said that the CDCP needed the money to buy insecticides, spray pumps, chemicals for its laboratories, platelets separation kits and rapid diagnostic test kits (RDTs), and to create and print pamphlets for a public education campaign on dengue. He said the CDCP had a strong network, with a supervisor stationed in each union council. It monitors and tracks data on 50 epidemic diseases in the province, he added.

He said that the CDCP was using the emergency fund of Rs80 million to supply district administrations with insecticide and spray pumps. The Health Department will also import platelets kits with the money, he said.

Malaria concern

The official also raised concerns about malaria control, saying that no money had been released to the CDCP though Rs193 million had been allocated under the Roll Back Malaria scheme to fight the disease between 2009 and 2014. He said the CDCP lacked RDT kits for malaria, though the World Health Organisation (WHO) recently gave the Punjab government around 80,000 kits.

CDC Director Dr Junaid Qureshi was not available for comment.

New cases

According to the Health Department, 150 fresh dengue fever cases were reported in the last 24 hours, including 126 in Lahore. Of the 2,279 total reported dengue cases in Punjab so far, 1,951 have been reported in Lahore.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 4^th, 2010.