LAHORE, Dec 17: The health department has directed all the teaching hospitals in the province to establish isolation rooms to handle and treat patients with haemorrhagic fever.

This was stated by Punjab Health Minister Dr Tahir Ali Javed while talking to reporters after the inaugural session of the 16th annual international symposium on family medicine, organized by the Pakistan Society of Family Physicians in collaboration with the Punjab AIDS Control Programme at a local hotel on Saturday.

In view of the increasing cases of haemorrhagic fever, Dr Javed said he had himself inaugurated an isolation room at the Allied Hospital, Faisalabad, for the handling of these patients. He said these isolation rooms would be fully equipped and have the facilities of oxygen, gloves and other disposables.

The minister said he had also asked the Mayo Hospital’s south medical ward head, Prof Akram Javed, to prepare simple operating procedures (SOPs) for the handling of haemorrhagic fever patients. Stating that Prof Javed had been asked to send him the SOPs by Monday (tomorrow), the minister said the guidelines would be sent to all secondary- and tertiary-care hospitals for display in emergency departments as well as in isolation rooms.

He said he had also asked Prof Javed to establish a helpline at Mayo Hospital’s isolation ward to provide information and awareness about the haemorrhagic fever as well as measures to handle such patients. He said the maximum data about the patients suffering from this disease would help identify its cause and cure.

Answering a question, he said, the blood and other samples of haemorrhagic fever patients had been sent to the National Institute of Health, Islamabad, and analysis results were expected to come on Monday (tomorrow). Replying to another question about the Supreme Court’s verdict in the case of alleged rape of a Kashmiri girl by a Mayo doctor, the minister said the decision was welcoming. “Now, we feel tension free,” he said.

The minister said the health department would now see how this issue got mishandled. He said the department would proceed against the alleged rape case accused, Dr Maqsood Husain, for his professional misconduct. He said a male doctor had no right to take female patients for outing.