PESHAWAR: The dengue fever claimed two more lives here on Tuesday, taking the overall death toll to seventeen as government and its line departments failed to put up a coordinated response to the expanding epidemic across Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

A report released by dengue response unit said that Fatima Bibi, 45, and Huzaifa, 4, both residents of Tehkal area in Peshawar died at Khyber Teaching Hospital during the last 24 hours. It said that 1,656 suspected patients turned up at the hospitals and 244 of them tested positive for the ailment.

About 132 new patients were hospitalised, bringing the number of total admissions to 425. There is no coordination among line departments, district governments and civic agencies to adopt a holistic approach towards the issue due to which the concerns are growing that situation in other districts such as Mansehra, Haripur, Abbottabad, Buner, and Malakand may go Peshawar’s way, according to sources.

Khyber Teaching Hospital, which is coping with 95 per cent of the dengue patients, is finding it hard to tackle the situation. Sources said that dengue patients were being admitted in different wards of the hospital that put at risk the lives of staff and people admitted for treatment of other diseases.

Govt fails to put up coordinated response to epidemic

They said that there were different guidelines issued by the government and the WHO regarding diagnostic and treatment protocol to the hospitals that created confusion. “The committees of senior consultants at tertiary care hospitals hold daily meetings regarding the outbreak of the disease but unnecessary visits by monitoring teams of dengue response unit create hurdles with regard to patients’ management,” sources at a hospital told Dawn.

According to them, they are short of space to deal with dengue patients because production of mosquitoes continues unabated in the provincial capital. Before Eidul Azha, the district government imposed ban on function of swimming pools which fell on deaf ears and people continued to enjoy swimming.

Similarly, district government and public health engineering department are yet to swing into action and eliminate stagnant water pools, the potential breeding sites, for mosquitoes. The only hope for the authorities concerned is decline in temperature that can lead to stoppage of mosquitoes’ production.

Physicians also question the haphazard mechanism followed by health department to share line list of dengue cases with the hospitals and UN agencies that is significant to trace confirmed patients after their deaths or discharging from hospitals following completion of treatment.

“There is need of technical teams including entomologists for vector surveillance and mapping of mosquitoes and ways to eliminate larva. The government isn’t bothered to take advantage of the Punjab’s successful experience of dealing with dengue fever,” said sources.

A health team, which arrived from Punjab to extend helping hand to Khyber Pakhtunkhwa with regard to prevention of the dengue ailment, is yet to start coordinated efforts.

“We are getting direction from Punjab government’s expertise. I don’t know if Punjab government has shared any guidelines with KP,” said Dr Matloob, administrator of the punjab mobile health unit, which arrived here on August 19.

He said that they were resuming screening and treatment of patients from Wednesday after Eid holidays. “I don’t know about any coordination with KP but want to get rid the province of the epidemic using our past experience,” said Dr Matloob.

Sources said that health department hadn’t made any formal request to the Punjab government to control dengue fever and the team from Punjab was visiting endemic areas on its own.

Published in Dawn, September 6th, 2017