KARACHI, Nov 5: The secretary of the Pakistan Medical Association, Dr Qaisar Sajjad, urged the Sindh government to fix the price of platelets bag so as to facilitate people affected by dengue fever.

He was speaking at a seminar on “Prevention of haemorrhagic fever and dengue fever” at the PMA House recently. He said that people were facing a lot of problems in getting platelets bags.

According to him, different blood banks or hospitals are charging differently for one mega unit of platelets, ranging from Rs7, 600 to Rs12, 500.

They also have to provide a donor on an exchange basis which causes sever mental torture to the attendants of the patients.

Dr Faisal Mehmood, Associate Professor Infectious Diseases, said that most dengue patients did not need admission to any hospital as long as the danger sign like bleeding from any location occurred.

He advised to increase fluids intake and reduce the temperature with paracetamol only.

“However, it is important to realise that platelets transfusion is only needed if the risk of bleeding is high and giving platelets does not help cure the infection or help the body’s own platelets to recover quickly”, he added.

Dengue cases

According to the provincial dengue monitoring cell, the number of patients suspected of having contracted dengue or haemorrhagic fever, who were brought to various government and private hospitals, in the city, has crossed the figure of 2,000.

During the last 24 hours ending at 3pm on Monday, another 57 patients were rushed to hospitals for treatment of dengue fever.