KARACHI: The health department declared on Thursday four more deaths — three of them children under 12 years — from dengue fever, raising the official tally to 25 in the province.

According to the department’s data, two victims — a 30-year-old woman residing in district South and an 11-year-old girl residing in Keamari — had been admitted to the Dr Ruth Pfau Civil Hospital and the Ziauddin Hospital in Karachi.

The two other victims — a six-year-old boy hailing from Badin and a three-year-old girl — died at Liaquat University Hospital in Hyderabad.

Out of the total 5,899 patients who went for tests for the mosquito-borne viral infection during the last 24 hours in the province, 1,192 tested positive.

In Karachi and Hyderabad divisions, 642 and 550 new cases of dengue fever were confirmed.

The number of new admissions at government and private hospitals stood at 109 and 100, respectively.

“A total of 4,940 dengue cases have been recorded across the province so far this month, while the total number of dengue-affected people this year has risen to 10,502,” secretary health Rehan Baloch stated in a press statement.

Sources said the situation was far more serious than what was being officially presented as at least 28 lives had been lost to the illness in Karachi alone — 12 deaths at the Sindh Institute of Infectious Diseases and Research Centre, six at the Aga Khan University Hospital and 10 at the Indus Hospital.

“The general public is paying a high cost for official negligence. If the government had timely initiated vector-control measures, we wouldn’t have been seeing so many people dying from an easily preventable disease,” said Dr Abdul Ghafoor Shoro of the Pakistan Medical Association

Published in Dawn, November 7th, 2025