PESHAWAR: The quarters concerned have recommended to the government to revoke health emergency after decline in the cases of dengue haemorrhagic fever with fall in temperature in the province, according to officials.
The health department has already revoked Covid-19 emergency after decrease in cases. On Monday, only one case was recorded in the province.
Health officials said that the indications showed that the disease was over as mosquitoes, the carrier of the virus, could not survive in low temperature. They said they had recommended to the government to revoke emergency as they did not need it any further due to the onset of winter season.
The health department has already revoked emergency regarding Covid-19 as the government has not extended it after the expiry of three-month period in September. So far, the province has diagnosed 22,957 dengue patients with 18 deaths. “During the last 15 days, the number of cases has dropped down to a level where the department does not require health emergency,” said officials.
Officials say situation becoming normal in KP
The health department had been invoking Public Health (Surveillance and Response) Act, 2017, every three months since February 2020 to pave way for speedy procurement of medical and surgical supplies to deal with the threat posed by the outbreak of Covid-19.
Officials said that the health emergency was extended from time to time to be able to cope with the situation. They added that last time it was extended from July to August but after dip in cases, it hadn’t been extended.
They said that Covid-19 infections had come down drastically due to which they started procurement of personal protective equipment (PPEs), medicines and other items through normal procedures.
Officials said that health department had been extending emergency regarding Covid-19 on advice of World Health Organisation and Centre for Disease Control (CDC), US, because coronavirus was a global pandemic. “Now both the organisations have not recommended it,” they added.
They said that they were in touch with WHO and CDC regarding Covid-19 but the situation was quite normal and they did not need to further extend the health emergency.
“Still, we have PCR laboratories working throughout the province but we are making procurements through normal procedure of advertisement, tendering and bidding to select the supplier,” said officials.
They said that through health emergency, the rules were relaxed to enable the department to procure required items and take quick measures unlike normal procedure that took longer to procure medicines and other items.
The department reported only one Covid-19 patient after conducting a total of 1,262 tests during the last 24 hours. So far, 224,838 cases and 6,374 deaths have recorded in the province. However, during the last one month, about 150 cases were detected with two mortalities, therefore, there was no need to keep the emergency in place, they said.
Officials said that situation in the province was becoming normal as health facilities in the flood-hit districts were also restored. They said that the province had so far reported 79 cholera cases but last patient was recorded a month ago.
“The cases of acute water diarrhoea, snakebite and scabies have also got down and the department is set to run the affairs through normal procedure. The department has a complete setup at the district level to deal with epidemics and outbreaks and requires emergency when the situation gets out of control,” they said.
Published in Dawn, December 20th, 2022
