LARKANA, Jan 4: Many cases of a skin disease known as leishmaniasis have been reported in the district. Confirming the outbreak of the disease, the focal person for leishmaniasis in Larkana , Dr Farooq Soomro said 10 to 15 patients belonging to different parts of Larkana and Dadu districts were being reported in the OPD regularly.

He said it was Feb 2001 when 130 cases of the disease were detected in the Kachho belt of the Shahdadkot district. Dr Soomro said the National Institute of Health, Islamabad, provided 3,000 ampoules of injections in April 2001 and the disease was controlled.

He said again in Jan 2002 outbreak of the disease was reported and to overcome it the World Health Organization and the Sindh Health department jointly donated 5,340 ampoules of injections.

The WHO undertook a threefold programme of documentation, treatment and prevention to eradicate the skin disease that had constantly affecting rural and urban areas. He said the WHO provided medicines but left final phase of prevention unfinished.

Had the world body fully completed its programme, there would have been a total control of the disease in the affected areas, he claimed. The medicines with the concerned cell established in the Chandka Medical College Teaching Hospital had been exhausted since Feb 2004 while the cases continued to swell, he said.

The local health officials repeatedly wrote to the WHO, the Sindh health department, National Institute of Health, Agriculture Research council for providing medicines but in vain.

The experts from the Raukyus University Japan, Kochi Medical School Japan and the H.E.J Institute of Chemistry Karachi continued research on the vector sand fly. Dr Soomro stressed the need for starting the preventive phase to address the issue before it could attain epidemic proportions.