LAHORE: The number of dengue positive cases and critical patients continues to rise ‘alarmingly’ owing to the ‘pathetic’ surveillance activities to stop the growth of mosquitoes.

The official figures shared in a meeting showed the occupancy of the beds reserved for the dengue patients in seven teaching hospitals of the city has reached 100 per cent.

The Jinnah Hospital has turned out the ‘most overburdened’ health facility where two to three dengue patients are sharing a bed while many others have been put on stretchers and benches in corridors.

The alarming part of the information is that the provincial capital has reported all the four strains of the dengue virus -- DENV-1, DENV-2, DENV-3, DENV-4 -- which means the number of critical patients and deaths may increase if treatment facilities were not expanded on a war footing.

The data showed the dengue patients were also more than the beds capacity in other government hospitals of the city.

Beds occupancy in seven hospitals touches 100pc

All the beds allocated for dengue patients have been occupied in Lahore General Hospital, Jinnah, Mayo, Services, Sir Ganga Ram, Said Mitha and Mian Munshi hospitals.

The dengue virus is also infecting kids as the Children’s Hospital has admitted 23 patients against the total 27 beds allocated for the purpose.

The number of serious patients of the virus with multiple complications, including critically low platelets, are increasing in the city.

The data said five critical patients of dengue virus died during the last 24 hours in Punjab, mostly in Lahore, while 25 other such patients were under treatment at the high dependency units of the government hospitals.

The bed occupancy in the government hospitals of other cities of the Punjab province has also reached an alarming proportion.

The hospitals included DHQ Hospital, Rawalpindi, DHQ Teaching Hospital, Sahiwal, Benazir Bhutto Hospital, Rawalpindi, DHQ Teaching Hospital, Sargodha, Bahawalpur Victora Hospital, DHQ Hospital, Faisalabad and Holy Family Hospital, Rawalpindi.

The official figures show the number of serious patients in the government teaching hospitals of Punjab (other than Lahore) has increased to 26.

The number of probable cases [465] of dengue has also increased sharply in Punjab.

As many as 231 more people tested positive for the virus during the last 24 hours, bringing the tally to 5,133 so far. Of them, 146 were reported from Lahore, according to the official figures.

The virus claimed lives of five dengue patients during the last 24 hours in Punjab, bringing the death toll to 20.

Recently, at a departmental meeting, the chief executive officer of the District Health Authority, Lahore, said most of the positive cases of the virus were appearing from the Defence Housing Authority, an official told this reporter.

He quoted the CEO as saying that the reason was that the residents of the DHA were not allowing the health teams to carry out surveillance.

Consequently, the surveillance teams were either filling the survey forms with ‘fabricated’ or incomplete information.

Published in Dawn, October 15th, 2021