KARACHI: The Sindh health department has designated hundreds of officials as health inspectors across the province to control dengue that had claimed 32 lives besides infecting around 6,000 people last year, it emerged on Sunday. In a notification issued by the secretary of the provincial health department, the district health officers along with the executive district officer for health in Karachi have been classified as health inspectors.

Besides, according to the notification, all the town health officers of Karachi, district officers (preventive), deputy town health officers of administration and preventive wings, taluka health officers, surveillance officers (all), union council medical officers (all), senior director, medical services, Karachi Metropolitan Corporation (KMC), directors, additional directors, chief sanitary inspector, inspectors, health and sub-inspectors, health of the city’s six district municipal corporations (DMCs), malaria supervisors of the KMC and the Sindh health department, sanitary inspectors of all the tertiary care hospitals, all the assistant commissioners and mukhtiarkars of Sindh and all the officials in charge of the rural health centres of Sindh have been notified in the category of health inspectors.

The officials have been entrusted to carry out operation and functions according to the standard operating procedures of dengue prevention and control, which have been designed by the programme manager of the dengue prevention and control programme, Sindh, in light of the cases trend, reporting, referral, diagnosis, treatment and vector surveillance.

These officials have also been mandated to supervise, monitor and ensure spray or fumigation for the control of dengue and submit report to the Sindh health department on a fortnightly basis, according to the notification.

In a follow-up meeting held at the Commissioner’s House, with Karachi commissioner Shoaib Ahmed Siddiqui in chair, it is learnt that the hierarchies of all the land-owning agencies in the city had been asked to designate their health inspectors in accordance with the Sindh government directive.

The notification, however, is silent over a time frame for the new apparatus to start working even when the supervisory body, the prevention and control programme, had not got shape to deliver properly.

Mr Siddiqui also asked relevant officials and institutions to improve their performance to contain the spread of Congo-Crimean Haemorrhagic Fever (CCHF), dengue and naegleria fowleri, or ‘brain-eating’ amoeba. Chlorination is the best cure against naegleria germs that attack human brain through nasal cavity and rarely any victim survives their onslaught.

The commissioner assigned Dr Shakil Mullick as the focal person for the matters relating to CCHF, dengue and naegleria and asked him to inform the media about level of threat posed by the three diseases.

Meanwhile, the KMC announced it had launched a month-long campaign on a directive of the chief minister to eradicate dengue and CCHF threats.

KMC administrator Rauf Akhtar Farooqui said that ‘despite shortage of resources’, all possible measures would be taken to make the campaign successful. The KMC vector control programme remained dormant for want of funds.

Officials have identified North Nazimabad, SITE, Cantonment Board Clifton, Saddar, Federal B. Area, Gulistan-i-Jauhar, Jamshed Road, Liaquatabad, Malir, Landhi and Korangi as the areas where more than 80 per cent cases of dengue had been reported in the past.

The officials said that although the city received fewer showers this year, the diseases had already started posing a real danger to the general healthcare. “We are still one month away from the day when the monsoon season calls it quits, yet such dangers could be multiplied if more rains come down,” said a senior official in the provincial health department.

Sources said apart from other actions, a focal group comprising six departments and civic agencies failed to take rounds of tyre shops to ensure that they regularly change water in their tubs and duly wrap stocks of tyres. Tyres are considered ideal breeding grounds for mosquitoes. An official admitted that visits to tyre shops had remained negligible so far.

Published in Dawn, September 1st, 2014