PESHAWAR, June 9: Malaria is likely to afflict more people in the months ahead because the government has not initiated a fumigation exercise and hospitals lack staff to tackle such cases, a health official said.

He said last year, malaria caused roughly 2,000 death in the NWFP, specially in two geographical clusters, some southern and northern districts.

“The breeding season of mosquitoes would continue for three months, July-August, which is likely to cause more deaths among the people, owing to lack of anti-mosquito spray and non-availability of separate staff,” said the official.

He added that there are 32 species of mosquitoes of which only two, i.e, Anophelese and Stephesai (both females), acted as vectors, and transmitted the disease from one person to another.

The government has allocated an amount of Rs6.6 million for the year 2003-4 to fight the disease in the province’s 24 districts. Last year, Rs6 million had been earmarked for the Roll Back Malaria (RBM) programme, under the WHO’s guidelines.

Of the total 24 districts, 10 have been declared high-risk on the basis of Annual Parasite Incidence (API)’s report. They are: Bannu, Lakky Marwat, Dera Ismail Khan, Karak, Swat, Shangla, Buner, Malakand, Swabi and Mardan.

Drugs have been supplied to the BHUs, RHCs, dispensaries and civil hospitals, and arrangements have been made to diagnose patients for malaria.

Likewise, four of these districts — Dera Ismail Khan, Lakky Marwat, Malakand and Swabi — where the API was more prevalent, had been provided four vehicles by the National Malaria Control Programme to reach the people. Initially, the WHO’s strategy of RBM had been implemented in these districts to be extended to the rest of the districts in the next phase.

The people in the four districts would also be provided with impregnated bed net that are treated with five per cent deltamethrine insecticides, on subsidised rates to protect them against mosquito bites.

But there is no fund available to fumigate the stagnant water pools and heaps of garbage, to stop the breeding of mosquitoes. The official, however, say that the people should sprinkle kerosene oil on the heaps of garbage and pool of stagnant water.

According to the officials, strategies would be adopted to diagnose the malaria patients early, and provide them with prompt treatment. Any patient coming to health facilities in the high-risk districts would be tested for malarial parasite in 24 hours, and would be given a dose of chloroquine.

In case of relapse, the patients would be provided with another dose of tablets, fansidar, and if the problem persisted, the patients would be hospitalized.

“Malaria is the fifth largest killer in the NWFP. Children and pregnant women are the worst hit,” said the official.

The Malaria Eradication Programme (MEP) was launched in Pakistan in 1965, that was assisted by the WHO and USAID.

It was very successful, but unfortunately it was abandoned, and the strategy changed from MEP to Malaria Control Programme (MCP) in 1975 and the provincial health department was asked to implement it.

Subsequently, the MCP was merged with the provincial health services department in 1985, which dealt a serious blow to it. Now, most of its 823 staff members have either retired or are working at other places in the health department, whereas, according to the WHO guideline, for every union council or 2,000 persons one malaria supervisor is required.

Shortage of malaria staff is evident from the fact that only 25 supervisors worked in 99 union councils of Peshawar district. The situation in rural areas is all the more depressing given the fact that malaria staff was almost non-existent there.