Daily Times

Federal Minister for National Health Services Aamer Mehmood Kiani visited the dengue ward of Federal Government Polyclinic Hospital on Friday and examined the facilities being given to the patients.

Speaking on the occasion, the minister said the government will not tolerate any negligence in providing the best medical treatment to patients. The minister said the present government has already taken measures to control dengue. The minister also said that this year, most dengue cases were reported from rural areas. In this regard, “I have visited the Tarnol Union Council”.

The minister said that diseases have been contained and their outbreak by the Grace of God have been curtailed within the limits of Tarnol UC. “Tireless efforts have been made to control the outbreak by putting in huge manpower and diverting all available resources. Very few cases have been reported so far from other UCs.

The UC of Tarnol was hit hard by dengue fever this year because of the fact that it labourers and contractors as it dwells in large go downs of equipment junkyards and trash and heavy earth breaking machinery.

Secondly, there were huge dumps of solid waste in this area with no system of their disposal. Thirdly, there is no regular water supply system. The community living here depends on intermittent supply of water that is mostly through water tankers that forces workers to store water in open water containers leading to dengue mosquitoes breeding.

Teams working in Tarnol are looking into all these aspects to control the disease through active indoor and outdoor surveillance.

National Health Services Ministry spokesman said that on the direction of National Health Services Federal Minister Aamer Mehmood Kiani, the Health Department of Islamabad is working on a strategy composed of two parts and has held meetings to depute its teams comprising of sanitary inspectors and lady health supervisers as well as workers to launch a continuous campaign; in its first part of the strategy, it has directed the staff for carrying out the following measures. Social mobilisation by house to house visits of lady health workers for motivating community to create awareness amongst the rural population to adopt preventive measures to save themselves from dengue and ask them to remain vigilant from dengue mosquitoes to flourish inside their homes and around the residences. The community is being motivated to remove solid waste from these places. They would also hold awareness walks, display banners, distribute pamphlets and also motivate school children for the purpose.

Outdoor surveillance is being carried out and water bodies should be treated with chemicals by adding tempos granules to destroy dengue vector completing its life cycle thereby stopping its growth from larvae to pupae stages in stagnant water that are active larvae breeding sites.

Indoor surveillance of dengue is also required. For indoor surveillance, lady health workers are making house to house visits in the community.

Published in Daily Times, October 27^th 2018.