PESHAWAR: Khyber Pakhtunkhwa has recorded 500 dengue haemorrhagic fever cases in the current year, far less than other provinces of the country, mainly due to timely and coordinated measures by the line departments to eliminate larva and respond to case detection at community level, according to officials.

“Last year, the province reported 16,000 dengue cases by mid of October. The number has now fallen to 500 only. About 18 deaths were also reported in 2022 due to co-morbidities. This year, there is no mortality,” Peshawar-based medical entomologist Mohammad Ajmal Khan told Dawn.

He said that the downtrend in dengue cases was result of the strict supervision and monitoring by Health Secretary Mahmood Aslam Wazir, director-general health services and other high-ranking officials, who held regular meetings and visited hotspots to check the ongoing activities.

“Our staff checks 50 houses in the same area when we diagnose a positive case in any locality. The presence of larva is checked and awareness session for the community is held wherein people are told about the larva and the method for its elimination to stop production of mosquitoes, the transmitters of the virus,” he said.

Of 9,349 country-wide cases, the province had recorded only 500

Dr Ajmal said that bulk of infections recorded in the province had travel history to Lahore, Karachi and Rawalpindi etc in other provinces where the vector-born disease was endemic and more cases were recorded there. Of the total 9,349 dengue cases recorded countrywide this year so far, Punjab has reported 3,745 cases, Balochistan 3,053, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa 500, Sindh 1,291 and Islamabad has recorded 760 cases.

Peshawar has reported 103 dengue cases, Swabi 69, Mardan 45, Charsadda 37, Battagram 36, Kohat 31, Malakand 26, Haripur and Bajaur 20 each, Mansehra 18, Dera Ismail Khan 15 and Nowshera, Abbottabad and Lakki Marwat 12 each while patients reported in other districts are below double digits.

The administration held regular meetings in high-risk districts throughout the province and gives reports to respective commissioners and health secretary, who lead the dengue provincial response unit.

Dr Ajmal said that joints efforts by 41 entomologists, lady health workers, district health offices, tehsil municipal administration and district administration resulted not only in decline of dengue cases but also led to public awareness due to which people were taking measures to curtail the production of mosquitoes.

Director Public Health Dr Irshad Ahmed Roghani told Dawn that education department was playing active role in scaling up awareness. He said that students were pressing their parents to adopt measures against dengue.

The rising awareness among people is supplemented by health department’s steps, carrying out multiple interventions such as spraying chemicals on stagnant water pools, environmental management and capacity-building of people at community level to fight the disease.

“Teams are working at local level with logistic support by district health administration to visit the infected areas and provide free bed nets to the vulnerable population,” said Dr Irshad.

He said that chief secretary chaired meetings regularly wherein he reviewed the implementation of Dengue Action Plan and issued instructions in line with the government’s policy.

Dr Irshad said that among the infected patients 394 (79 per cent) were male and 106 (21 per cent) female. The disease has infected 139 people in the age group of 21 to 30 years, 119 in 11 to 20 years, 102 in 31 to 40 years, 57 in 41 to 50 years, 26 in 50 to 60 years, 25 in one to 10 years and 16 in 61 to 70 years while the rest were above 80 years.

Published in Dawn, October 17th, 2023