HARIPUR, Oct 15: Executive district officer health on Friday rubbished reports that seven persons including two women had died of dengue fever in the district during the last three weeks, saying the fever had claimed only one life so far.

The health department reported that all the patients who were confirmed by the National Institute of Health as dengue positive were out of danger and had been discharged from hospital.

About 42 cases of dengue positive have been discharged while 12 cases put under surveillance at the DHQ hospital, EDO Health Dr Mohammad Idris told Dawn .

He said his department had after initial tests of over 136 patients sent their blood samples to NIH for dengue test out of which 19 samples were diagnosed positive, including five women.

While the report sent to his office from the Ayub Teaching Hospital, Abbottabad suggested that 23 patients including seven women were detected dengue positive, thus raising the tally to 42, said the EDO health, adding, only one patient namely Mohammad Abbas of Muhalla Noor Colony died of dengue hemorrhagic in Haripur. He maintained that some other deaths that were reported from different parts of the district were not due to dengue fever but due to some other natural causes.

He said 12 patients were admitted to the hospital with high grade fever with symptoms similar to dengue fever, adding, their blood tests had been sent to NIH and their results were awaited.

Dr Idris said fog spray in all the localities and villages have almost been completed and now the health department had decided to carry out house to house spray shortly.

The EDO health advised the public to protect themselves from mosquito bite and immediately visit the DHQ hospital if they felt fever, orbital pain, body aches, nausea and loss of appetite.

Dr Idris said there was not a single case of Crimean Congo Hemorrhagic (CCHF) disease in the district.

REVIEW MEETING: The two-day monthly Operational Review Meeting (ORM) of the National Commission for Human Development, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa chapter, was concluded on Friday. The meeting was attended by all the general managers of 23 districts and Fata. Riaz Hassan Khan, Director Operations NCHD KP and Javed Azam from Islamabad were also present.

NCHD Haripur chapter general manager Mohammad Zaman welcomed the participants and briefed them about the activities his staff was carrying out for enhancing literacy in the district.

On the last day of the meeting eight monitoring teams comprising were constituted and sent to different government primary schools, government girls primary schools, feeder schools and adult literacy centre established by NCHD in different localities of the district.