PESHAWAR: The mosquito-borne disease caused by dengue virus took two more lives in Peshawar on Thursday, raising the death toll to 30 in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, officials said. Also, 3,411 patients were taken to hospitals in the province, majority of them to three tertiary care hospitals in Peshawar. Of them 573 were diagnosed with dengue virus in the past two days, ie Wednesday and Thursday.
Officials of the provincial Health Department said both the patients died at the Khyber Teaching Hospital (KTH), where the majority of dengue patients were being brought.
The health facility is comparatively closer to Tehkal and Pishtakhara localities, where the deadly dengue virus was first reported in July, this year. It is apparently this reason that of the 30 total deaths caused by dengue, 26 of them died at the KTH. However, a senior medical consultant in KTH argued that it was true that patients died in the hospital were brought to them for treatment of dengue fever, but he claimed that a majority of those patients were also suffering from other serious ailments.
“In fact, the patients were brought to us for dengue treatment but they were already suffering from other serious diseases too. Their condition deteriorated after being infected by dengue virus and that’s stated to be the cause of death,” explained a medical consultant.
The two latest dengue victims were identified as Ihsanullah Khan, son of Mohammad Ashraf. He was 45 years old and was a resident of Sufaid Dheri in Pishtakhara Union Council.His relatives said they took him to KTH on September 19 where he was diagnosed with dengue virus and he died on Wednesday evening in the same hospital.
According to the relatives, hundreds of other people of Sufaid Dheri had been infected by the dengue virus and there would hardly be a house where someone from the family is not infected or hospitalised. “The main issue is power load-shedding. We have been experiencing 14 hours load-shedding in our area and it seems to us the government itself wants us to be killed by this mosquito,” complained one Said Ajab Khan.
Like many other residents of the dengue-affected areas, Said Ajab did not seem satisfied with the efforts of provincial government and distribution of mosquito repellent lotion and mosquito nets.
The second dengue victim was a 50-year old woman, Armara, daughter of Mohammad Din. She was a resident of Board Bazaar in Peshawar and was admitted to the KTH on September 19 but succumbed to the deadly virus on Thursday in the hospital.
As mentioned, 573 people have been infected by the dengue virus in the past two days, 333 of them were diagnosed with the virus in the KTH. “It took 30 lives and there seems no end. Unfortunately people are still not able to understand how they could avoid this disease,” said a senior official of provincial health department.
Of 3411 patients, 2025 were handled and screened in the KTH alone.Similarly, KP’s largest hospital, ie the Lady Reading Hospital (LRH), received 579 patients and after their screening free of cost, 86 patients were tested dengue positive. In the Hayatabad Medical Complex (HMC), 349 patients with fever were shifted in the past two days. Of them 77 were diagnosed to be dengue positive.According to the Dengue Response Unit, 239 patients were admitted in two days while 243 were discharged.