KARACHI: Body set up to suggest dengue, VHF control
By Mukhtar Alam
KARACHI, Dec 18: Following the deaths of 50 people due to dengue fever and viral haemorrhagic fever, the Sindh Health department on Monday constituted a three-member committee to recommend strategies for prevention and control of the disease in the province.
Sources privy to a review meeting on dengue fever, held with provincial health minister Syed Sardar Ahmad in the chair, said the committee comprising the health department’s additional secretary (technical), EDO (Health) Karachi and an official of the National Malaria Control Programme Islamabad, will present recommendations in the third week of January 2007.
xperts and officials were of the view that in Sindh, proper planning and application of preventive and surveillance measures was a must for the next couple of years where about 4,676 patients reportedly infected with dengue virus were admitted to various public and private hospitals during the last five and a half months.
It was feared that incidence of dengue could be more severe in nature in the coming year and as such there was dire need of capacity building for all concerned groups and organisations at different levels. The meeting was told that all the four strains of dengue and chicken guinea virus were detected in patients admitted to hospitals after the dengue epidemic outbreak since July 2006, said one source.
After the dengue outbreak, 4,541 patients were admitted to Karachi hospitals, another 135 were admitted in hospitals in the interior of Sindh. Of them 1,564 had tested positive for dengue virus till December 15.
According to a presentation by Syed Shakeel Mullick of Sindh Health Department, the majority of dengue related cases were reported from Gulsahn-e-Iqbal, Malir, Saddar, Liaquatabad, Orangi. Landhi, Jamshed and North Karachi Towns of Karachi, while the overall ratio of male and female patients remain 70:30 per hundred, the rate of fatalities remained 1.07 per cent of the total dengue admissions at hospitals.
At least 2,398 patients were rushed to hospitals in Karachi for treatment of DF or VHF in November, while the number of deaths during the same period in Karachi was 17. Forty-six deaths were reported in Karachi, of which 27 deaths occured between June 14 and October 31. The meeting observed that some of the hospitals were not found up to mark as far as supply of DF or VHF patients’ details by them was concerned.
Representatives of different organisations discussed the possibilities of cooperation and coordination in future for combating mosquito afflicted diseases, particularly dengue fever and offered their specialised services, if needed. The meeting was told the dengue virus had almost been suppressed due to the cool weather in Sindh, but there was need to exercise fogging against mosquitoes from January to April. A relapse of the epidemic was expected around mid April, if preventive measures were not exercised, said another source privy to the meeting.
Those who spoke at the meeting included Sindh health secretary Dr Noshad Sheikh, Dr Abdul Majid, the additional secretary of the health department, Dr Abdul Wahid Bhurt of WHO in Sindh, Prof Jan Mohammed, the vice-chancellor of Liaquat University of Medical and Health Science, Dr Mukhtar Ahmad of National Malaria Control Programme.
Dr Wahid presented the draft of the National Strategy prepared by the federal health ministry and WHO in Islamabad for prevention and control of dengue fever and viral haemorrhagic fever and maintained that most of the plan could be adopted with necessary adjustments, if needed, for practical intervention and ensuring effective control and prevention measures against the diseases in Sindh. He said that there was a need to set up a full time dengue control cell at provincial and sub provincial levels.
