Daily Times

Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Health Department on Saturday said dengue fever had claimed five lives in the province and currently more than 3,888 patients were under treatment, the spokesman said.

In a report issued by the KP Health Department, the highest numbers of patients were reported from district Mardan with 1458 dengue fever cases, 418 patients were registered in Peshawar, 636 in district Khyber, 378 in district Nowshera.

KP Health Department has declared five districts sensitive including Khyber, Mardan, Nowshera, Haripur and Peshawar. The precautionary measures in these districts were accelerated by conducting day and night fumigation drives in all sensitive areas and free-of-charge CBS tests were announced in district Mardan.

The spokesman further said that ‘dengue isolation wards’ were established in the district headquarters hospitals (DHQs) of above-mentioned districts and more than 10,000 mosquito nets were provided.

Meanwhile, Deputy Commissioner Peshawar Shafiullah Khan has directed towns’ administrators to arrange fog spray and to organize awareness campaigns for the general public to inform them about releasing stuck water from their houses, mosques and schools.

Similarly, Deputy Commissioner Dir Lower Zubair Khan Niazi supervised the dengue awareness walk in Samar Bagh Tehsil. He, accompanied by concerned officers, met with area people and urged them to take precautionary measures to save maximum people from the fatal disease.

Section 144 imposed in Mardan to control dengue : In the context of rising dengue cases in Mardan, the District administration has imposed Section 144 and directed to avoid placing old tires in open air, said an official release issued here on Saturday.

Taking precautionary measures, the District administration Mardan also imposed a ban on keeping junk, open water tanks and other items in the open air, public places as well.

He said that strict action would be taken against violators.

However, besides Mardan the reports of dengue attacks have intensified across Khyber Pakhtunkhwa including Peshawar with 307 new cases of dengue reported in the last 24 hours, Health Department officials told media men.

He disclosed that after the arrival of new cases, the number of dengue cases has increased to 4188 with Mardan reported the highest number of 73 new dengue cases, the number reached 1,531. He informed that 37 cases of dengue have been reported in Nowshera, bringing the total to 415 and 153 new cases of dengue have been reported in Peshawar, bringing the total to 571.

The Health department officials further informed that 11 cases of dengue have been reported in Haripur, bringing the total to 294 while the number of dengue cases in Khyber increased 615. He said 15 cases of dengue have been reported in Lower Dir and the total number increased to 215 with 34 more dengue patients admitted in different hospitals of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

He said currently, 75 patients are under treatment in various hospitals of the province and so far, the dengue mosquito has claimed 5 lives in the province.