LAHORE: Health authorities are yet to take aggressive steps to prevent the outbreak of dengue in the province with a special emphasis on Lahore, as they seem to be busy in manipulating official data of positive patients with those visiting hospitals in greater number.

Ignoring the plight of dengue patients, public sector hospitals are denying admission to them with an excuse of shortage of beds, forcing them to get treatment from private healthcare establishments.

The situation is said to be worse in government sector teaching hospitals of Lahore which are sharing over 70 per cent of the disease burden.

The Pakistan Academy of Family Physicians (PAFP) representing the largest network of medics, has blasted the government for misleading the public about the exact burden of dengue, particularly in Lahore, as it claims that the worst epidemic of the virus has hit the city hard.

Family physicians’ body disputes official data

It is evident from a comparison of officially reported number of dengue positive patients with those visiting clinics of family physicians.

The health department said 299 more dengue cases were reported during the last 24 hours in Punjab, including 222 in Lahore alone.

It said the total number of the positive cases of virus has reached 3,475 in Punjab with most of them (2,078) in Lahore.

PAFP President Dr Tariq Mahmood Mian said that in Lahore alone nearly 6,000 family physicians were running clinics in streets.

Quoting figures reaching the association, he said every family physician was attending nearly 7-8 patients with strong symptoms of dengue virus in Lahore.

He said the patients were suggested CBC and other necessary tests keeping in view their financial position.

From the probable dengue patients, he said, the test reports (including less than 100,000 platelet count and below 4,000 WBS) confirmed a majority of them were positive.

Dr Tariq Mian said the family physicians were imparted proper training for dengue management during the first worst epidemic of the virus in 2011 and had played a key role to eradicate it from the province.

“According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), the patients showing the above-mentioned results of two test reports must be referred to nearby hospitals,” the PAFP president said.

Following this benchmark beside strong symptoms, he said many physicians were referring the positive dengue patients to government hospitals in Lahore but most of them were denied admission.

He said feedback from patients reaching the family physicians suggested the hospitals were taking ‘shortage of beds’ as an excuse.

Recalling the 2011epidemic, Dr Tariq Mian said the then PML-N government had provided a free SMS system to the family physicians to report probable and confirmed dengue cases keeping in view the privacy of the patients.

The system was launched to prepare a comprehensive data bank with a prime purpose to assess the exact burden of the disease in Punjab.

It was easy to manage for the doctors to share the exact number of the dengue patients (both suspected and confirmed) during clinical practice and to convince the patients to share brief particulars.

However, the current regime has made the physicians overburdened by issuing a ‘complicated’ system namely ‘Dengue GP APP’ while declaring it mandatory to get cell phone numbers, complete name, other family details and address and CNIC number of each patient.

He said many patients visited the clinics without CNICs and the family physicians were also finding it hard to get other mandatory details from them like mobile phone numbers and family details.

“It is a challenging task for the doctors to get mobile phone of visiting women patients,” he said.

He said during the Covid epidemic in 2020, the government had started visiting the residences of the patients to pick and shift them to hospitals ‘forcibly’ for treatment at official health facilities.

Following that fear, the male dengue patients were also reluctant to share mobile phone numbers and family background.

“Being PAFP president, I raised this issue with the government functionaries in a recent meeting with the Punjab Healthcare Commission,” he said, adding they ignored his suggestion to simplify the Dengue GP APP.

He had also requested them to relaunch the previous SMS service but to no avail, Dr Tariq Mian said, adding another important issue the family physicians raised was the expensive test fee being charged from the patients for dengue tests.

“The previous government had brought regulations, fixing the CBC test fee at Rs90 for the private sector hospitals and labs for dengue diagnoses,” he said.

“Currently they are charging Rs500-900 from patients for the same tests.”

The PAFP president suggested CM Usman Buzdar to take notice of this situation.

Primary and Secondary Healthcare Department Deputy Secretary Dr Shahid Maghsi and Specialised Healthcare Department official Maqbool Malik were not available for comments despite repeated attempts.

Both these officers have been entrusted with responsibility to overseas the dengue cases reported from all over the province.

Published in Dawn, October 10th, 2021