PESHAWAR: Three more patients of dengue haemorrhagic fever died on Saturday as the health department devised a six-month plan to eliminate larvae from inside houses in 12 union councils in the provincial capital and establish linkages with the districts to be able to not only control the disease, but also ensure it didn’t occur next year.

Sangeena Bibi, 37, Jan Ahmed, 70, and Bas Bibi, 60, died at the Khyber Teaching Hospital, bringing the death toll to 48, said a press release by the Dengue Response Unit (DRU). It said that of 1,610 patients 336 tested positive in the province of which 102 were admitted.

“We have planned to clear larvae from the houses in six high-risk union councils and as many surrounding UCs in Peshawar. From Monday, two male and two female health workers would start visiting houses to scale up knowledge of the residents about the causes of dengue haemorrhagic fever,” Dr Iftikharuddin of health department told Dawn.

Death toll rises to 48 as three more patients die

Under the plan, the female health workers would interact with women inside houses while the male workers would inspect the water tanks on the rooftops and would identify larvae, he said. “Our workers would demonstrate to the people the way how to eliminate the larvae,” he said.

The workers would revisit the same houses next week and would again examine the situation to ensure that the water pots were covered. He said that they would visit about 8,000 houses in each of the targeted UCs. The mosquitoes lay eggs which develop into larvae within six to seven days and in next 4-5 days mosquitoes are borne, he said.

Dr Iftikhar said that the temperature would drop below 10 degrees Celsius in November, but before that they were taking steps to do away with the breeding sites. “In this way, we can eliminate mosquitoes within two weeks,” he said.

The plan to run from October through March also includes coordination between the health department and districts besides ensuring that both the public and private hospitals establish isolation wards and massive campaigns are launched about the prevention of dengue fever.

The strategy is aimed at ensuring that all sources of breeding of mosquitoes are eliminated as there is likelihood that the disease could re-emerge after March if measures aren’t taken, he said.

The DRU would coordinate implementation of the plan under the supervision of Directorate General Health Services, he said, adding that the desired structure to meet all technical and managerial needs for dengue prevention and control plan in the province had been put in place.

Dr Iftikhar said that the government would also set up an advisory group to provide technical assistance to DRU for monitoring and implementation of the plan. Peshawar is leading with 54,397 dengue cases, Mardan 3,026, Buner 994, Mansehra 644, Malakand 630, Swabi 339, and Haripur 184.

The government is facing a daunting task to cope with the dengue epidemic as there are over 3,000 automobile workshops located in the high-risk UCs where old tyres are potential breeding sites of the mosquito. Since June this year, the province has recorded 60,807 suspected cases of whom 60,665 underwent diagnosis and 12,632 turned out to be positive. So far, 10,537 hospitalisations from dengue have been registered.

Published in Dawn, October 8th, 2017