PESHAWAR: Dengue Haemorrhagic Fever continues to affect people amid hopes as health experts believe that decline in cases will happen only after rain when temperature will dip below 15 degrees Celsius.
Khyber Pakhtunkhwa on Monday recorded 45 more dengue cases, taking the overall tally of infections in the current year to 4,836, according to a report released by Integrated Diseases Surveillance and Response System of Public Health Section at Directorate General Health Services.
The report said that total number of hospitalised patients was currently 40 after 13 more checked into hospitals. It said that so far 1,795 patients had been hospitalised due to dengue and the number of active cases in the province was 330.
Senior officials, meanwhile, said that the infection would continue to haunt people as temperature was still favourable for breeding of mosquitoes, the carriers and transmitters of the vector-borne ailment.
They said that current temperature in Peshawar was 22°C, which was highly appropriate for breeding of mosquitoes. They said that the situation would improve when the temperature came down below 15°C. They said that the only possibility of drop in temperature was rain. Mosquitoes cannot survive in low temperature.
The province has recorded only two deaths, both in Mardan, due to the disease so far. Charsadda district, adjacent to the provincial capital Peshawar, has recorded 1,079 dengue cases, the highest number of infections in the province, followed by Kohat with 563 cases, Peshawar with 516 cases and Mardan with 429 cases.
Haripur has recorded 378 dengue cases, Mansehra 326, Swabi 165, Abbottabad 136, Dera Ismail Khan 128, Dir Lower 126, Nowshera 119 and Malakand 117 while Hangu has recorded 115 cases. The disease is widespread as all districts except six are recording infections.
Officials said that usually dengue cases started appearing in April in one and twos and surged in August, September and October but declined in November when the temperature dipped. “This year situation is not the same as climatic conditions are still suitable for production of mosquitoes,” they added.
Reluctance of people to adhere to preventive measures continues to create problems as storage of water inside houses and standing water pools in different localities, market places, automobile worships are big issues for health workers associated anti-dengue efforts.
Health experts believed that the number of infected persons was higher than reported by health department as several patients visited private hospitals and clinics so they were not recorded. Peshawar is the worst-hit district as the disease has been endemic here for the last 10 years and infects more people every year. Only this year, Charsadda has surpassed Peshawar in terms of cases because of violent outbreak in its few union councils that has now been controlled.
Experts say that decline in dengue cases will be witnessed only after rain that brings down the temperature, otherwise the disease will continue to haunt people as preventive measures are not existent in addition to power outages that force people to store water in unprotected ways, leading to population of mosquitoes.
“The only hope is rain that will eliminate mosquitoes as campaigns by government to scale up awareness about causative agents of the disease have fallen on deaf ears,” they said. That is the main reason that dengue has become a recurring public health issue, which starts in April and ends in November every year.
Published in Dawn, November 4th, 2025
