KARACHI: As the winter continues to keep temperatures moderately low in the city keeping the mosquito causing chikungunya and dengue fevers in hibernation, officials in the Sindh health ministry have said they are chalking out a plan to control chikungunya, which affected numerous people in 2017 and may spread again when the temperature will rise ending the hibernation period of the mosquito and awakening it to wreak havoc with the public health, it emerged on Tuesday.

The officials said more than 4,700 cases of chikungunya were reported last year in Sindh, making it the worst for the disease. Most of the patients were reported within the city.

They said the total number of cases in 2016 were an extremely low at 405, which too, then, was the highest for the province when that disease had begun affecting its citizens.

“We are planning for an effective strategy now to keep this disease in check during the next summer, and the strategy will be similar to what we have done in case of dengue, another mosquito-borne disease,” said a senior official in the health ministry.

However, he admitted that the strategy for controlling dengue was effective for first half of the last year when the number of its patients was tangibly low than the corresponding period of the previous year, but it surpassed the previous year’s total in the second half when the disease affected the patients more frequently.

Some 12 patients died last year against three deaths in 2016 because of dengue.

The officials, however, were confident that rigorous fumigation campaigns with more commitment and investment would be initiated to control the two mosquito-borne diseases along with malaria.

A recent survey shows the incidence of the disease is greater in the city’s five towns.

Officials in the health ministry together with a team of the World Health Organisation surveyed the five towns of the city and assessed the dangers posed by the germ.

They said epidemiologists and entomologists in the WHO team and from the health ministry visited the five towns and prepared a report.

The teams visited Orangi, Korangi, Lyari, Bin Qasim and Malir towns falling in five out of six districts of the city which showed greater incidence of chikungunya last year.

Officials said a strategy had already been devised to rein in the disease, which is not life-threatening, but, damages the human body to a great extent and its patients experience unbearable pain.

Officials in the Sindh health ministry reckoned Malir as the most affected district of the city vis-à-vis the brunt of the highly painful disease.

Karachi remained the city with the most chikungunya cases in the province with close to 4,000 cases; while the desert district of Tharparkar recorded more than 7,000 of the remaining cases.

Officials in the health ministry said Malir remained the district with most chikungunya cases; while, among the city’s 18 towns, Gadap constituted the largest part of the figures.

The city’s health authorities sent hundreds of blood samples of suspected chikungunya to the National Institute of Health, Islamabad, of which most were confirmed to have afflicted with the disease.

Officials said they had proposed the Sindh government to establish a laboratory to detect the disease in the city as there was none in Sindh.

The PMA Karachi expressed its concerns over the spread of chikungunya in Karachi.

It said chikungunya was an emerging as an epidemic- vector-borne disease of considerable significance in the WHO South-East Asia Region.

Published in Dawn, January 3rd, 2018