Daily Times

KARACHI: The emergence of high-fever and severe joint pain cases in abundance in Malir its and surrounding suburbs during last week, which authorities fear of a possible outbreak of Chikungunya virus, exposed the weaknesses of Sindh’s Health Department and its poor management to tackle the outbreaks, health experts warned Monday.

The response time, lack of coordination between provincial health departments, domain of responsibility and absence of facility to diagnose such diseases all over the province are some clues, they said.

“When ever such cases arise, samples are either sent to Islamabad or even abroad, like South Africa, to diagnose the diseases,” said Dr Qaiser Sajjad, sectary general Pakistan Medical Association while talking to Daily Times.

It is unclear that what is stopping the Sindh Government to establish a virology laboratory for early diagnosis of such outbreaks, he added.

Since there is no facility to diagnose ‘chikungunya’ in any public healthcare unit allover Sindh, provincial authorities had to request Islamabad based Field Epidemiology and Laboratory Training Program (FELTP) to send its experts to investigate the cases of the suspected infection.

It took around a week to FELTP experts to visit the affected areas and the people, when they visited the area on Monday. The laboratory tests results are expected to reveal from Islamabad on Tuesday (today) as experts would take the samples to Islamabad.

There is only facility available in the city is at the Aga Khan University Hospital (AKUH), the private healthcare facility which can diagnose the diseases.

According to National Institute of Health (NIH) Islamabad, in April 2005 the USAID Mission in Pakistan agreed to fund a three year proposal to establish a Field Epidemiology and Laboratory Training Program (FELTP), a comprehensive approach to improve capacity in epidemiology, public health surveillance and response, public health laboratories and information systems for surveillance. In September 2006 FELTP, Pakistan was officially launched and first training course started in 2007 in collaboration with Ministry of Health and NIH.

Murad Ali Shah, soon after assuming the reins of Sindh Government as Sindh Chief Minister earlier during the year declared health emergency in the province upon the worsening conditions of healthcare facilities. Interestinglythe CM, who was in Dubai, had to take notice regarding the high fever cases from Malir from abroad.

There was a visible communication gap between Sindh Health Department and Sindh Government Hospital Saudabad where the cases were referred to initially which were thought to have of Chikungunya by hospital’s management as the Health Department remained in dark.

“Basically it is only provincial government’s responsibility to declare the outbreak in the province. Since I was kept in dark, I came to know about this news from media quoting Sindh Government Hospital Saudabad management about the possible outbreak,” said Dr Masood Solangi, the Provincial dengue prevention and control program’s manager.

According to Dr Qaiser Sajjad, it was high time to establish two virology laboratories both in rural and urban Sindh. The establishing of such laboratories would result in quick diagnosis of tests,” Dr Sajjad added.