Daily Times

ISLAMABAD: It has become an alarming matter for the ICT administration that no city hospital has proper arrangements to treat the patients of dengue fever despite the fact that about 70 per cent patients registered with Rawalpindi’s three main hospitals belong to Islamabad.

It was widely noted that most of the medical practitioners of the Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences (PIMS), the Poly Clinic and the CDA Hospital were advising patients to move to hospitals in Rawalpindi due to lack of proper arrangements.

The data available with this scribe shows that about 5,200 patients of Dengue fever had been registered so far in Islamabad and Rawalpindi. About 2000 patients in Islamabad and 3200 patients were registered in Rawalpindi.

Since June 2016, 213 cases of Dengue fever were registered with the PIMS. During the last 24 hours three more patients namely, Gul Hussain, resident of Barakau, Samiullah r/o 26 Number Chungi and Ali r/o Garden Town Shekrial, were registered at the same hospital.

Similarly, the data also reveals that the three allied hospitals in Rwalpindi including Benazir Bhutto Hospital (BBH), Holy Family Hospital and District Hheadquarter Hospital had registered about 300 confirmed cases of Dengue fever during the last two weeks.

To date, the three teaching hospitals have tested as many as 3,250 patients as positive for the infection of which nearly 70 per cent, well over 2,000, are residents of the federal capital.

Till the begning of the month of November the three hospitals of Rawalpindi were receiving about 60 patients each average on a daily basis while the number had decreased to five in average due to the increase in mercury level.

When contacted District Health Officer Islamabad, Dr. Najeeb admitted that most of the patients were being moved to Rawalpindi hospitals for treatment.

The residents of various towns alongside the Islamabad Highway from Tarlai to Rawat were the most hit victims of the Dengue virus.

In rural areas of Islamabad, he said, there was no proper solid wastage disposal system which was a main reason for the breeding of the Dengue larvae.

He said, at the request of the ICT administration to the Islamabad Mayor, solid wastage disposal work had been started in areas of Bara kahu and Tarlai on an emergency basis.

He said the CDA had a full-fledged directorate for this system and the latest machinery but it was only doing its work in the urban areas of capital.

Dr. Najeeb said the three hospitals of capital including the PIMS, the CDA hospital and the Poly Clinic had full arraignments to treat the patients of Dengue fever, saying the patients of the above areas were moving to Rawalpindi hospitals due to the shortage of distance as compared to Islamabad hospitals.

The Deputy Director PIMS, Dr. Arshad Mehmood Janjua, said that the administration had allocated a unit for the treatment of Dengue fever patients. The hospital has the expertise and all the arrangements to treat the patients.

However, the official sources of BBH had claimed that there were no proper arrangements of treatment of patients in the hospitals of Islamabad and that was the main reason that mostly patients of the federal capital were moving to the neighbouring city.