RAWALPINDI: Dengue patients continue to arrive to government run hospitals, despite the fall in temperatures in the garrison city.

At present, 290 patients are admitted in three government hospitals in Rawalpindi – 143 in Holy Family Hospital (HFH), 131 in Benazir Bhutto Hospital (BBH) and 16 in District Headquarters (DHQ) Hospital.

Most of the patients have arrived from the border areas between Rawalpindi and Islamabad, where the provincial government spent millions of rupees and recruited over 1,600 sanitation patrols for a anti-dengue campaign that began in February but did not yield positive results.

“Health workers mostly pay attention to areas where patients came from, and left other union councils unattended,” a senior health official told Dawn.

He said the provincial government was busy dealing with political workers, and did not receive updates from the City District Government Rawalpindi (CDGR) to control anti-dengue activities.

The health official said no meetings were held in the last month to review the anti-dengue campaign in the city. “A total 450 dengue patients arrived from Rawal Town, 151 from Potohar Town, 78 from Chaklala Cantonment Board and 223 from Rawalpindi Cantonment Board areas.”

He said fogging had not been conducted in cantonment areas in the last two months, even though most civilian residential areas are located near drains and greenery.

He said government hospitals include patients arriving from Shakrial South, Shakrial North, Khanna, Dhoke Kala Khan and Islamabad’s border areas in the list of patients coming from Islamabad.

A senior CDGR official said more than 1,777 patients in three government run hospitals had arrived from Islamabad.

He said the matter had been taken up with the capital administration, which failed to respond positively.

“Due to the negligence of the Islamabad administration, the dengue virus spread in the border areas of Rawalpindi and all the patients from Islamabad also came to Rawalpindi for treatment,” he said.

BBH medical superintendent Dr Asif Qadir Mir also said the local administration’s claim was accurate, since most patients in the hospital had come from Islamabad.

Published in Dawn, November 2nd, 2016