MULTAN, Nov 23: Cases of deadly malaria form falciperum are reportedly on the rise in several parts of the south Punjab due to sheer neglect by the Health department’s malaria control wing.
A health department official said the falciperum usually resulted in black water fever which was a fatal disease. Scores of falciperum malaria cases had recently been reported from several areas, he said.
The situation has become more serious in the backdrop of the World Health Organization (WHO) warning to Pakistan of expected proliferation of malaria due to the influx of Afghan refugees.
The provincial health department has a separate directorate of the malaria control programme (MCP) with around 1,000 officials on its payroll in various categories from director to microscopists.
Huge resources are spent through the MCP to combat the disease but to no avail. MCP mobile teams prepare thousands of block slides for examining the disease-affected patients to provide them radical treatment.
Sources term this an exercise in futility as these slides are seldom examined in Health department laboratories and no feedback is ever provided to workers of communicable disease control (CDC) wing to enable them to take care of the malaria positive cases.
Local CDC branch officials maintained they had not been provided with specific malaria medicines and logistics for a long time which rendered their services ineffective.
Salaries to a large number of seasonal spraymen responsible for spraying insecticides had not been paid due to a ban on payment by the Finance department, they added.
Drugs shortage: State-run health facilities at district, tehsil and union council level are facing acute shortage of medicines and consumables due to a conflict of powers between the bureaucracy and the new setup of district governments.
State-run health facilities in the Punjab have not been supplied medicines since the start of the current fiscal. Non-availability of medicines has affected the performance of government hospitals especially in rural areas. The patients who depend on state-sponsored health services are facing hardships as they cannot afford going to private hospitals and clinics.
After the inception of the devolution plan, district governments are supposed to procure medicines for government hospitals fall under their jurisdiction. Executive district officers (health) of various districts called tenders for the supply of medicines, but the reputed national and multi-national pharmaceutical firms showed disinterest to take part in bidding assuming financial incompetency of the EDOs to do so.
After the failure of the whole exercise, district coordination officers of a number of districts sought powers of principal procurement officers to carry out the medicine procurement operation successfully. But the provincial health ministry has so far not responded positively. Currently the PPO powers are rested with the health secretary.
Sources in the health department revealed that health ministry highups wanted to retain the procurement powers at provincial headquarters irrespective of the matter that the centralization of powers was against the spirit of devolution plan.
When talked, some senior health officials opined that procurement powers to districts would minimize misappropriation of funds and goods as an army of elected people would be vigil from the union council level to district level.
Social circles have urged the government to end this impasse immediately as the poor are suffering a lot due to a tug-of-war between various centres of powers since the introduction of the devolution plan.