PESHAWAR: Four more persons died of haemorrhagic dengue fever here on Wednesday, bringing the death toll from the disease to 25.

The situation prompted the health department to enlist support of the local government representatives to ask their voters to adopt preventive measures. A three-day seminar at the Town Hall would start on Thursday wherein experts would scale up the awareness level of the councillors so they could persuade their voters and subsequently eliminate the epidemic.

A news release issued by dengue response unit said that Nadir Khan, 40, Pervez Gul, 45, Muslima Bibi, 50, and Mir Taj died of the vector-borne sickness in Peshawar’s hospitals on Wednesday.

A total of 1,832 suspected patients underwent screening and 423 of them tested positive for the disease while 123 were hospitalised. It said that 382 patients were being treated while 85 were discharged from hospitals after recovery.

Health dept seeks support of LGs to ask people for adopting preventive measures

About 95 per cent cases are coming from three union councils where authorities have focused their activities but the situation is not showing any sign of improvement because the continuous requests by district government and health department to the population of the affected areas to cover the water-pots and remove other stuff where it is accumulating have fallen on deaf ears.

“Instead, people are asking for divine intervention to stay safe from dengue fever,” said officials associated with the dengue response teams. In Tehkal, the epicentre of the ailment, and the adjacent villages people have affixed papers inscribed with prayers to avoid being infected with the virus.

The prayer leaders in mosques of the same localities are asking people to recite the Quranic verses for safety. The teams deputed by the government have been visiting houses to dispose of the larva-containing water. However, there are breeding sites of mosquitoes inside houses.

The doctors at Khyber Teaching Hospital, Lady Reading Hospital and Hayatabad Medical Complex have focused on dengue-related activities amid frequent visits by dignitaries. The situation is scaring the staffers of hospitals and many have already contracted the infection.

About 25,000 persons have been screened for the disease and a total of 5,800 have been tested positive with 5,200 hospitalisations since the first week of July when the disease broke out.

The physicians said that it was wastage of resources to test every suspected patient as people coming with symptoms should be given paracetamol. Most of the patients did not need admission but they were hospitalised because the matter was politicised.

Dr Iftikharuddin, an expert, told Dawn that they had pinned hopes on the local government representatives to do away with the public health issue.

“We would be holding five sessions for councillors for three consecutive days wherein they would be asked to convince their voters to eliminate the sources of breeding sites of mosquitoes from their houses,” he said.

Dr Iftikharuddin said that first they were going to spread awareness among the people of the high-risk union councils and then among the residents of the rest of the areas from where some cases were reported.

“There is no breeding site left outside as we have eliminated water pools and sprayed larvicides wherever needed but we cannot do that inside house due to risk of contamination of water,” he added.

Published in Dawn, September 14th, 2017