LARKANA, Dec 5: The Sindh health department has received 5,000 injections from the country office of the World Health Organization to help in its efforts against leishmaniasis.

Leishmaniasis is a skin disease prevalent in certain districts of Sindh and Balochistan.

The injections, it was learnt, have been kept at the inspection and import depot of the health department in Karachi.

The districts of Larkana, Dadu, Khairpur, Sukkur and Naushehro Feroz will receive 1,000 vials each and the injections will be provided free of cost to the patients.

Dr Farooq Rehman Soomro, an official of the WHO in Larkana district, said that it was better to establish focal points before occurrence of fresh cases, which, he added, were likely to occur in January.

The WHO, the National Institute of Health and the Malaria Control Programme have completed a nine-month-long survey on sand fly — whose bite causes the skin disease.

The Pharmacy department of the Gomal University, Dera Ismail Khan, had not only chosen Larkana as a centre to conduct research on leishmaniasis but had also provided an ointment, it had prepared, to the Larkana office of the health department.

Dr Soomro said that the ointment had proved to be effective and with its use it was possible to avoid the side effects of the injection.

Meanwhile, the director-general, health services, Sindh, has asked the executive district officers of the health department in Larkana, Dadu, Khairpur, Sukkur and Naushehro Feroz to submit their requirements for injections so that they could be provided from the Karachi depot.

DETAINEE recovered: An official of the sessions court, Larkana, on Wednesday raided the Naudero police station and recovered a man, Hussain Bakhsh Chahwan, kept in illegal confinement.

The in charge of the police station failed to produce any document validating his arrest.