ACCORDING to the special assistant to the prime minister on health, Dr Zafar Mirza, the number of registered dengue patients in the country now stands at over 10,000. Out of the total, 2,363 patients are from Punjab; 2,258 from Sindh; 1,814 from KP; and 1,772 from Balochistan. To make matters worse, malaria too has been on the rise in recent months. The two worst-hit cities are Karachi and Rawalpindi. Just yesterday, another patient in Karachi succumbed to the disease, raising the number of fatalities in the city to 11 this year alone. These are alarming figures, and they are expected to grow as parts of the country continue to experience moderate to heavy rainfall, temperatures soar, and the cleanliness of the cities remains a challenge for the authorities. The WHO classifies dengue as the world’s “fastest spreading vector-borne viral disease”, with approximately 40pc of the world’s population at risk of contracting it.

Pakistan has struggled with containing the spread of the disease at different points in its recent history. While Dr Mirza has advised opposition leaders to not ‘politicise’ issues concerning health, such disasters are directly the result of poor governance — one cannot neatly separate politics from public health. When Lahore was hit with a dengue epidemic back in 2011, the then chief minister was able to counter the further spread of the disease by being proactive and taking the necessary measures such as enacting new laws and seeking the expertise of medical teams from Sri Lanka to ensure that such a tragedy would not take place again. This knowledge and assistance was then passed on to the KP government, when it was facing its own dengue outbreak in 2017, which resulted in over 50 deaths and thousands rushed to hospitals to seek treatment. So while citizens should take preventive measures, the ultimate responsibility of carrying out anti-dengue campaigns and fogging rests with the government, and local governments must be empowered to this end.

Published in Dawn, September 26th, 2019