KARACHI, Oct 22: Two more deaths have been reported from a village in Deh Allah Bano, part of the Gabopat union council in Keamari Town, raising the death toll from the viral infection to 10 in the area. Pakistan Fisherfolk Forum representative Surayya Talpur said that 40-year-old Hafiza Ayub died on Saturday in Pub Allahyar village in Deh Allah Bano after remaining unwell with high fever and severe joints pain for over a week. His grandson, one-and-a-half-year-old Asif Yousuf, had died of the same disease over a week ago, she said, adding that the PFF came to know about the two deaths on Monday.

Explaining the delay in reporting the deaths, she said the village was one of the two villages which did not form part of the Oxfam-PFF project currently being run in the rest of the 16 Deh Allah Bano villages. As part of the support offered by the Pakistan Medical Association in the diagnosis and treatment of patients, she said, five patients having similar symptoms were taken to the Civil Hospital Karachi on Monday and blood samples were taken to test the viral infection for dengue, malaria and typhoid. The reports would be out in two days.

When Town Health Officer Dr Nazir Ahmed Kolachi was asked if any action had been taken by the government in this regard, he said medical teams visited different villages on Monday and distributed medicines there. However, he couldn’t give details of the visits.

Deh Allah Bano, comprising 18 villages, with each village having a population of 500 to 1,000, has been in the grip of a viral infection for over a month. Though 10 people, including two pregnant women, have so far lost their lives to the virus, which in some cases has been identified as malaria, the government has failed to intervene effectively in the villages that constitute one of the most backward areas of the city.