LAHORE: The Special Branch of Punjab police has revealed that out of the 2,118 health facilities in the province visited by its field staff, the life-saving anti-rabies vaccine is not available in 1,851 of them -- 88 per cent, with the southern part of the province faring the worst.

The Dera Ghazi Khan region, the home district of Chief Minister Usman Buzdar, presented a very disturbing picture with the vaccine available only in 12 health facilities out of the total 217 visited by the agency in the region. As far the DG Khan district is concerned, out of the total 56 health facilities/hospitals, the anti-rabies vaccine was available in only two of them.

The report, titled ‘Dog-bite cases on the increase in Punjab: a serious source of concern’, was forwarded to Chief Minister Buzdar last week. A copy of the report is available with Dawn.

Special Branch report says drug available in two of 56 facilities in DG Khan district

In the report, the Special Branch exposed the scale of negligence on the part of both the health authorities and the district governments, stating that 15 people had died of bites from stray dogs and 1,945 others injured in various parts of the province. Of them, five victims, including children, belonged to the Rahim Yar Khan district.

The CM ordered action against the health authorities over their failure to ensure provision of life-saving vaccine to public sector health facilities.

The Special Branch reported that Punjab was witnessing a sharp increase in dog-bite cases, mostly among children. The report was prepared in the wake of a dog-bite incident in Rahim Yar Khan on March 1 in which a pack of stray dogs attacked Rashid, 4, when he was going to school.

The Special Branch lamented that during the survey, it found that four state-run teaching hospitals of the province also lacked the vaccine, including Children’s Hospital, Mayo Hospital, Services Hospital and Nawaz Sharif Social Security Hospital Lahore.

Making the Rahim Yar Khan incident a case study, the Special Branch had dispatched various teams to government hospitals all over the province to compile a detailed report on the provision of the vaccine patients.

“It has been reported that the non-availability/acute dearth of anti-rabies vaccine in majority of the government hospitals across Punjab province has endangered the lives of the people bitten by the stray dogs,” reads the report. “The field staff of the agency carried out a survey of 2,211 government health facilities of the Punjab province in the wake of the minor boy’s dog bit case.”

The health facilities surveyed included teaching hospitals, district headquarters hospitals, tehsil headquarters hospitals, basic health units and rural health centres.

According to the region-wise summary, the maximum number of infirmaries where anti-rabies vaccine was not available was in Gujranwala region with 362 hospitals followed by 280 hospitals in Bahawalpur. Similarly, the vaccine was not available in 234 hospitals of Sahiwal region and 210 of Multan, according to the report.

It added that the vaccine was available in only four out of total 182 hospitals of Sheikhupura region, 46 out of 227 in Rawalpindi region, 13 out of 158 in Sargodha region and nine out of 39 hospitals in Faisalabad.

The Special Branch also conducted district-wise analysis where the vaccine was not available -- Bahawalnagar stands at the top with the maximum number of hospitals, 106, where the life-saving drug was not provided followed by Rahim Yar Khan with 104 and Okara 103.

Published in Dawn, March 30th, 2019