PESHAWAR, Oct 16: One army cadet has died of dengue fever, while another is admitted in the Combined Military Hospital, Rawalpindi, with haemorrhagic dengue fever symptoms in a village in Haripur district, a World Health Organization official said here on Thursday.
However, a Peshawar-based spokesman for the ISPR denied the death of the cadet.
“A contingent of the Pakistan army camped in a village Pind Mohri for exercise. They stayed in the camp for three days from Aug 11 to 13. Later, 22 soldiers developed high grade fever in Military Academy, Kakul, on Aug 26 and were admitted to CMH, Abbottabad,” said a WHO’s official who visited the area after the EDO Health, Haripur informed DG Health, NWFP, on Oct 6 about the reports of suspected outbreak of dengue fever in the district.
He said a medical specialist from Rawalpindi suspected the soldiers to have developed dengue fever and their blood samples were sent to AFIP, Rawalpindi, where two samples were found positive for dengue while three were on border line and the results for three samples were still awaited.
The WHO’s mission that visited the area, said in a report that major epidemic of dengue fever was reported in Pakistan in 1979. Both vector and parasite are known to exist in this region.
“Above all two confirmed cases of the disease have been identified in the CMH, Rawalpindi, and there is a confirmed death on Sept 7 due to the disease,” the report said.
Health officials said soon after receiving reports from the EDO (health), Haripur, a meeting was held at the office of the DGHS where it was decided to send a fact- finding mission to Haripur.
The medical superintendent of the DHQ hospital, Haripur, briefed the mission on the situation. The medical specialist of the hospital Dr Ejaz Shah, said that he had been receiving patients of high grade fever for the last several weeks from areas of Niloor, Dingi and Balila.
He said all normal blood tests were negative but the pattern of disease was suggestive of droplet infection since he was receiving five or six cases from the same house and the family which is unusual for dengue.
The mission was reportedly informed that the reports of dengue cases were unofficially received from the doctors of Military Academy Kakul.
The WHO mission also visited Pind Mohri, the site where the soldiers got sick, to conduct a rapid assessment survey in villages around the site of the camp to find out the traces of disease.
Situated about 55 kilometres from Haripur town, it was a small village of nearly 1000 people. A village elder denied any unusual increase in illness specifically the cases of high grade fever in the village.
The entomologist searched a big rainwater-filled pond in the middle of the village for larvae but could not find many. The elder told the mission that about a furlong from the village there was an open ground where the army erected camps for training purposes. This year the troops camped at the site three times. The mission visited the camp site which was a big plain area with many trees and a big pond of rain water.
The mission could not find any clue that could suggest an outbreak of dengue fever in district Haripur.
Since the soldiers camped for just three days near Pind Mohri it is highly unlikely that they had picked this infection from that place.
This report said that the soldiers have picked the virus from somewhere that needed to be investigated and control measures applied.