RAWALPINDI: Fumigation of a girl school in Jand tehsil of Attock District supposed to protect its students against dengue fever instead brought 36 schoolgirls suffocated by the spray fumes to Rawalpindi hospitals on Friday.

A special team of doctors is trying to bring them out of their trauma.

Thirty-two of the affected girls were admitted to the District Headquarters Hospital (DHQ) and four to the Holy Family Hospital (HFH). Eight of them have recovered and discharged. Psychologists continue treating the remaining 28, hospital sources said.

“They were shifted to the two hospitals of Rawalpindi on the instruction of Punjab government. They are out of danger and we are treating them for trauma,” Dr. Khalid Randhawa, Medical Superintendent of the DHQ Hospital told Dawn.

 Overcome by the suffocating fumes of the anti-dengue spray, they had fainted and were hysteric even after regaining consciousness, he said.

More than 700 girls were affected when ignorant local workers of the Punjab Health Department went ahead with the spray during the school hours, and without vacating the class rooms on Thursday. Some 50 young schoolgirls fell unconscious, raising an alarm and creating a medical emergency in the far off rural Jand.

Dr Randhawa said a team of three senior professors of the Rawalpindi Medical College will examine the under-treatment girls for their psychological condition and for signs of any respiratory infection.  

Deputy Medical Superintendent HFH Dr. Tariq Niazi said that out of the four Jand patients brought to his hospital, two have been discharged and the remaining two were out of danger.

Relatives of the schoolgirls attending them in the hospitals want the provincial government to take action against the irresponsible public health authorities.

“Fumigation is not done without vacating the place of humans. That it was done with classes full of students reflects the way local administration performs,” said Jand resident Malik Afsar whose nine-year-old daughter is recovering in the DHQ hospital.

He said that the government should devise a plan to avoid such thing in future.

His sentiment was echoed by Riaz Ahmed. “My niece was in the classroom and complained of breathing the day after the ill-planned fumigation of her school. We brought her to DHQ for better treatment. Thank God she is out of danger now,” he said.

Published in Dawn September 12th, 2015

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