PESHAWAR: Authorities are hoping decline in dengue cases with the advent of winter season as Khyber Pakhtunkhwa confirmed 102 more cases, taking the total number of infections in the province to 1,675 this year so far.

“As soon as the temperature dips, cases will recede because mosquitoes cannot survive in low temperature but presently we continue to focus on the elimination of larvae and management of patients admitted to hospitals or those staying in isolation,” Dr Irshad Roghani, the director of public health at directorate-general health services, said.

He said that reduction and production of mosquitoes, the only transmitter of the vector-borne disease in the province, was their focus to ensure that people stayed safe from bites and avoid infection.

Dr Irshad said that they would continue anti-dengue efforts as per plan to ensure that infections came down in the province with focus on epicentres of the mosquitoes.

KP has so far recorded 1,675 cases of the ailment

Meanwhile, entomologists said that the province did not have local dengue virus but it was imported from other cities through travellers and communicated to people through bites of infected mosquitoes. They said that dengue cases would decline because mosquitoes did not survive in temperature below 15 Celsius.

They said that active cases in the province continued to soar as currently 617 infected patients were either in hospitals or under home isolation and required protection against mosquito bites to safeguard others from the vector-borne disease.

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“We think October will still be good for dengue. Decreasing temperatures will help. It will start declining soon,” they said. According to them, the ongoing month of October has been the worst one as in its first week the province has recorded 771 cases, up from 761 cases recorded in the whole month of September. Of the confirmed patients, 1,056 have recovered and released from isolation with only two deaths recorded in Nowshera district.

As the disease sent 25 more patients to hospitals during the last 24 hours, making the tally of the hospitalisations 67, entomologists say that infections will start decreasing within a week subject to downtrend in temperature.

“In the month of November, incidence will be decreasing owing to onset of cold weather but there is no immediate indication that the virus will vanish, therefore, anti-dengue activities will remain in progress,” they said.

Entomologists said that people started getting infected with dengue fever in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa after 2010 flash floods that led to rise in population of mosquitoes after which the diseases became a recurring public health issue every year.

They said that the role of health department was diagnosis and management of patients but provision of water and electricity and keeping the environment clean and free of stagnant water pools were the responsibilities of other departments. They said Dengue Action Plan (DAP) was devised every year to make coordinated efforts against the ailment.

However, they said, the desired results of DAP couldn’t be achieved in the face of lack of close coordination among line departments to reduce population of mosquitoes and resolve the problems of water and electricity in the hard-hit districts, especially Peshawar which continued to record most cases every year. This year, the provincial capital has confirmed 568 patients.

“There are endemic areas in Peshawar which record 50 per cent of the province’s cases every year,” entomologists said. They added that health department, on its part, dedicated beds in all hospitals to admit patients prior to their confirmation but it was waiting for hot season to go and get rid of dengue.

Physicians claim to have improved their management skills regarding dengue due to which mortality from the disease was next to zero but they want other departments to work in unison and eliminate cause of mosquitoes breeding to reduce the incidence.

Published in Dawn, October 9th, 2024