PESHAWAR, Oct 30: The provincial government has allocated Rs60million to contain the spread of dengue fever. An official said that Rs50million had been released to the health department for taking immediate curative and preventive measures. He said that the provincial government had directed the district governments to carry out insecticide sprays at places breeding mosquitoes.

Likewise, he said that Rs10million had been released to the information department to launch an extensive public awareness campaign. The disease has killed one man in the NWFP.

The official said that the province was dengue-free as two patients, who had been diagnosed positive for the disease, had acquired it by travelling to and from Karachi, where the epidemic had killed about 28 people.

He said that emergency cells had been established in all district headquarters hospitals to cope with the situation. The official said that tehsil municipal officers (TMOs) in high mosquito prevalence areas had been directed to conducts anti-mosquito sprays to protect the people from the disease.

Confirming that Peshawar was one of the high mosquitoes prevalence districts, he said that the district administration had been advised to carry out sprays in sensitive areas, especially slum areas in and around the city.

Meanwhile, a dengue fever patient Feroz Khan showed considerable improvement at the Khyber Teaching Hospital.

“We are considering sending him home. But before (we do) that, we are going to collect another blood sample from him,” said a doctor.

Officials at the health department said that they were still waiting for the result of blood samples of Mukhtar Ahmad of Swabi, which had already been sent to the National Institute of Health in Islamabad.

He added that the blood sample of another patient, who was admitted to the district headquarters hospital in Dera Ismail Khan, showed that he was suffering from malaria.

According to another report, a patient, who belonged to Wana and had been admitted to the DHQ hospital in the Dera Ismail Khan, escaped from the hospital’s isolation ward.

The official said that people should contact nearest hospital if they suspected any patient suffered from dengue fever.

PPI ADDS: NWFP Health Minister Inayatullah on Monday assured the provincial assembly that effective preventive measures had been taken to control Dengue virus, adding that isolation wards were being set up in all the District Head Quarter Hospitals to keep Dengue patients away from others.