HYDERABAD, Feb 7: The Liaqat University of Medical and Health Sciences (LUMHS) has dispatched two teams to assess skin disease Cutaneous Leishmaniasis spread in Dadu, Khairpur Nathan Shah, Johi and Mehar talukas of Dadu district.
This was said by the vice chancellor, LUMHS, Professor Jan Mohammad Memon, in a statement issued here on Wednesday.
One team visited seven villages of taluka Dadu and Khairpur Nathan Shah on Monday with the collaboration of the EDO (health), Dadu, and examined 250 patients of Cutaneous Leishmaniasis.
The team explored the cause of the occurrence of the disease under the local conditions and the insect, sand fly, which bites the person at night and injects the germs into the body, was searched out in the dwellings of the villages. The team could not catch the sand fly as currently the optimal conditions for the breeding of the insect were not available.
The vice chancellor said that the insects breeded when the temperature was around 28 degree centigrade and humidity between 70 to 80 per cent. Due to the unsuitable micro environment the sand fly had undergone hibernation.
He pointed out that the incubation period of the disease was four weeks to eight months and it was presumed that large number of people were bitten by the sand fly about four to six months back and at that time the optimal conditions were prevalent.
Professor Memon said that the Cutaneous Leishmaniasis was endemic in Balochistan but due to drought and other environmental changes there was simulation of conditions with Balochistan which resulted in the development of suitable micro environment for the breeding of the sand fly.
The other reason of the epidemic was the free movement of people from Balochistan to the arid and semi-arid zones of Dadu district. This interaction had resulted in the free mixing of people and had provided the chance of transmission of the disease.
The vice chancellor warned that now the people of Dadu district were at more risk, and short term as well as long term measures were required to control the disease.
More than 3000 cases had been reported from the four talukas, highest number being found in Johi, Fareedabad, Wahipandhi, Kasbo, Ibrahim Laghari and Baid villages.
He said that out of 250 patients almost half were having chronic conditions, bad ulcers on nose, eyelids, foreheads, ears, cheeks and limbs etc.
The biopsy and smears were collected from eight seriously ill patients which would be examined at the LUMHS, Jamshoro.
The teams advised the people to report the cases immediately to the nearest hospital, use mates, coils and cream to repel the sand fly, take medicines regularly and keep the wound clean and well dressed, use the sand fly bed nets, cover the exposed parts of the body with cloth during night, carry out insecticidal spray in and around the houses, keep the homes and streets clean, remove garbage, and sleep at the level of about two to three feet above the ground.
The vice chancellor said that research on the dynamics of the epidemic would be continuously carried out and added that in April the vector of the disease would be searched out in order to find its relationship with the occurrence of the disease.