Dengue claims 149 lives in Pakistan this year, 62 in Sindh alone

ISLAMABAD: As many as 149 people have so far been killed in the country due to dengue fever in 2022, of which the highest number of deaths, 62, were reported in Sindh, officials said on Tuesday.

“Around 78,554 confirmed dengue cases have been reported from entire Pakistan till December 27, 2022, while 149 people died due to complications of dengue in the country”, an official of the National Institute of Health (NIH) Islamabad said.

The official said 62 people died due to complications of dengue in Sindh, 50 people died in Punjab, 18 in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, 11 in Islamabad and 8 died in Balochistan.

The highest number of cases was reported in Sindh where 23,191 confirmed dengue fever cases were detected, followed by Khyber Pakhtunkhwa where 22,960 were reported while 19,024 cases were reported in Punjab. In Balochistan, 6,534 people tested positive for dengue fever, 5,401 people tested positive for the vector-borne disease in Islamabad and 1,444 dengue fever cases were reported from Azad Jammu Kashmir where no death was reported. In the case of dengue, the number of cases would be 10 times higher than the official data while hundreds of people must have died this year”, Dr Khurram Nizami, an infectious diseases expert said.