Poor system in ICT rural areas posing health threats

Islamabad

The poor system of solid waste management in rural areas of the federal capital is posing a great health threat to public by giving chance to breeding of mosquitoes and flies that may cause spread of a number of easily communicable diseases including dengue fever and malaria.

Almost all 12 union councils of Islamabad Capital Territory rural areas have heaps of garbage and rubbish dumps on a number of points which are not collected and disposed of properly by any of the concerned government authorities on regular basis.

Health experts are of the view that solid waste management in rural areas of the federal capital is being ignored badly despite the fact that the garbage, feces and animal remnants and corpses pose a grave danger to public health. The population in ICT rural areas has already been recording a greater percentage of incidences of communicable diseases for years.

It is important that last year, in 2015, the population in ICT rural areas suffered an intense outbreak of dengue fever that is caused by mosquitoes ‘aedes aegypti’. In almost all public and private sector healthcare facilities in the federal capital, a greater number of cases of typhoid, cholera, dysentery and malaria are reported from the ICT rural areas that according to health experts, is because of poor solid waste management system there.

Of course, the heaps of garbage and rubbish dumps provide suitable conditions to breeding of flies and mosquitoes that cause spread of a number of communicable diseases, said Assistant District Health Officer at ICT Health Department Dr. Muhammad Najeeb Durrani when contacted by ‘The News’ on Tuesday.

He said the ICT Health Department has requested the administrators of the ICT rural areas to give more attention to swift disposal of solid waste that may help avoiding a number of seasonal infections.

It is important that flies are recognised as carriers of easily communicable diseases. Flies collect pathogens on their legs and mouths when females lay eggs on decomposing organic matter such as feces, garbage and animal corpses. Flies carry diseases on their legs and the small hairs that cover their bodies. It takes only a matter of seconds for them to transfer these pathogens to food or touched surfaces.

Studies reveal that diseases carried by house flies include typhoid, cholera and dysentery. Other diseases carried by house flies include salmonella, anthrax and tuberculosis. House flies have also been known to transmit the eggs of parasitic worms.

To a query, Dr. Durrani said the administrators at local government had given a lot of attention to swift disposal of garbage last year in the wake of a dengue fever outbreak and the ICT Health Department wants the same this year too.

He added the ICT Health Department has already launched a surveillance campaign against dengue fever under which the teams of health department have been working on elimination of potential breeding sites of mosquitos’ larvae but without swift disposal of solid waste, incidence of diseases like dengue fever, malaria, hepatitis, typhoid and cholera cannot be prevented.