LAHORE: Apparently, the Punjab health authorities have been misleading the chief minister by generating ‘fake reports’ to show low prevalence of the dengue virus in the province, which may sock the provincial government later as the mosquito-borne disease is fast becoming an epidemic.

The reports, contrary to the officially reported cases, suggest that the number of patients with dengue fever has increased manifold and the province was on the verge of an outbreak of the disease.

According to the reports emerging from thousands of general practitioners and private and public sector hospitals across the province, the incidence of dengue has significantly increased over the last few weeks, posing serious public health risk.

The health department officially reports that 20-25 positive cases of dengue fever are surfacing in Punjab daily. In Lahore alone, six patients tested positive for the virus during the last 24 hours, officially.

Experts rap Punjab govt’s laid-back approach towards checking the virus

On the other hand, the general practitioners report that 70-80 per cent of the total patients they are attending daily have symptoms of dengue fever.

Pakistan Academy of Family Physicians (PAFP) president Dr Tariq Mian lashed out at the health authorities for misleading the government about the actual impact of the dengue disease, saying as per the reports emerging from the general practitioners the dengue fever might have become an epidemic in the province.

“We have 12,000 general practitioners (GPs) registered with the Punjab Healthcare Commission (PHC) across the province,” Dr Tariq Mian says.

The GPs are receiving a record number of patients with dengue-like symptoms these days, but the health authorities are ignoring the data, he wondered.

“Our GPs in Punjab are receiving 70-80 per cent of the total patients with dengue fever [symptoms] daily,” he says, adding that though the figure shows Punjab is hit hard by dengue epidemic, official documents are playing it down.

The PAFP president says that dengue is a potentially fatal mosquito-borne viral disease that maintains endemic status in more than 100 countries and poses a global health concern.

It was only the Shahbaz Sharif-led government in Punjab that had taken stringent measures to fight the worst-ever dengue epidemics in the province, he says.

Dr Mian says Shehbaz as chief minister had constituted high-powered committees comprising Punjab chief secretary, IGP, additional IG special branch, commissioners, deputy commissioners, secretaries of various concerned departments, vice chancellors, principals of the medical institutions, senior medical practitioners from the leading teaching institutes and the well-known public health experts.

Shahbaz Sharif had assigned duties to these officials, and would preside over daily anti-dengue meetings to subdue the worst dengue outbreak in the province in 2011, he adds.

The Dengue Expert Advisory Group (DEAG), which was formed during Shehbaz Sharif’s tenure as CM in Punjab, had also played a decisive role in eliminating dengue from the province.

Unfortunately, he says, the present health set-up in the province seems to be nonserious towards the emerging public health threat.

“They [present government] are so negligent with regard to dengue outbreak that they didn’t even bother to take the thousands of GPs on board despite knowing their crucial role in the healthcare set-up for having direct access to the patients at street level,” the PAFP president laments.

He says though the health department has issued a form to the GPs to collect data of the dengue patients reporting to their clinics, it was too complicated to have the desired outcome.

“We have suggested [the health officials] many times to simplify the form, as it seeks personal information of the patients and their families, which they are mostly reluctant to share,” he says.

Dr Mian says the use of police by the Punjab government during the Covid epidemic against the SOP violators, following collection of patients’ information through a similar form, has caused fear and mistrust among a large number of dengue patients.

He adds that many patients can’t afford the financial burden of the repeated tests required for diagnosis of dengue virus, so they avoid getting listed by the health department.

Punjab’s former caretaker health minister Prof Javed Akram also expressed his utter disappointment over the anti-dengue activities of the government, stressing that prevention is much more important than the cure of the disease.

“We need coordinated response by different departments and agencies, including Wasa, Lahore Waste Management Company, municipal corporation, health department etc to prevent dengue from spreading to an alarming level,” he says, adding that these practices are not being adopted to check dengue breeding in the province.

He says that the recent heavy rains have created risk of dengue becoming an epidemic across Punjab, adding that the prime objective of the provincial departments should be the prevention of mosquito breeding.

Ignoring the reports of mushroom growth of the dengue larvae, the health department has not started door-to-door campaigns so far to check various sources of breeding of the mosquitoes, he says, adding that in the past the health workers used to check freezers, coolers, flower pots, artificial lakes and others such potential hot spots for dengue breeding and ensure water doesn’t accumulate there.

“During the first epidemic of the dengue in 2011, we had trained thousands of health professionals, including young medics, nurses and paramedics, for the diagnoses of the dengue fever and the treatment,” the ex-health minister says.

It was ensured then that no patient should die of dengue, he says, adding that fact-based data reporting had also helped a lot in eradication of the disease in the province.

Prof Akram warned that underreported dengue cases could destroy all the efforts and strategies aimed at eradicating the virus.

A spokesperson for Punjab Health Minister Khwaja Salman Rafique says that the department would make sure that reporting of the dengue cases data matches the number of patients visiting the public and private sector health facilities.

He agreed that showing less impact of the dengue disease would adversely affect the efforts to curtail the disease.

“The Punjab health minister has decided to take up the matter of underreported dengue cases in the next meeting of the cabinet committee which would review the situation of dengue and other viral diseases in the province,” the spokesperson says.

Meanwhile, he says the health minister has also sought reports from the relevant authorities reporting dengue fever data across Punjab.

Published in Dawn, September 12th, 2024