PESHAWAR, Sept 27: The provincial government has expressed anger over the slow response of the health department to tackling dengue virus and asked it to take immediate measures to raise awareness of the causative agents of the disease among the people.

On Tuesday, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Chief Secretary Ghulam Dastagir Akhtar directed the health department to run effective campaigns at the district level to save people from falling prey to the mosquito-borne ailment.

“The chief secretary has issued a letter to all the executive district officers (EDOs), health, showing his displeasure and concern over their slow approach to coping with the disease,” officials said. They said that Mr Akhtar had also shown anger over the non-prioritisation of the preventive measures by the EDOs and the way the matter was being tackled. The letter also asked the district health management to run aggressive campaign in media about the causes and preventive measures of the disease, which had so far killed six people in the province besides infecting 145 others.

The officials said that the health department's lack of seriousness in the dengue control could be gauged from the fact that the provincial focal person appointed by it to keep liaison with the entire province had proceeded abroad.

The chief secretary warned all the EDOs to launch visible and widely publicised activities to tackle the dengue virus.

“The government will monitor the situation concerning the awareness campaign and action will be taken against officials not sending daily reports to the directorate of health. The reports should include the number of suspected and confirmed patients and the number of patients admitted with the infection,” the sources said.

They said that the health department had yet to come into action despite allocation of Rs55 million last week by the government which had enraged the chief secretary, who had sought full reports about management of dengue cases since Sept 10.

They said that the health department had been asked to ensure that all the reports were received from the districts by Wednesday (today). The sources said that the publicity material provided by donor organisations was still lying at the directorate of health and no arrangements were in sight to send them to the districts.

The chief secretary has called for extensive measures to run awareness campaign and brush aside misconceptions about the dengue infection and save the people from preventable deaths.

In the letter, the EDOs, medical superintendents of the district headquarters and teaching hospitals had been asked to keep in touch with the directorate with a view to prevent the disease from assuming the shape of epidemic.

The officials said that a total of 337 suspected cases had been recorded so far in all the districts of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and the Federally Administered Tribal Areas, except Kurram and Orakzai agencies.