Health department to spring into action from 15th

Rawalpindi
The district health department has planned to start working in the field from February 15 to avoid a possible outbreak of dengue fever in 2015 and decided to carry out larvae identification and elimination campaign initially in the high risk areas from where confirmed cases of dengue fever were reported in the past.
The district health department would launch a special surveillance campaign to identify and eliminate larvae of the aedes aegypti, the mosquito that causes dengue fever, however, first of all the health department would enlist the ponds and water reservoirs in the district that cannot be eliminated, said District Health Officer Dr. Rafiq Ahmed while talking to ‘The News’ on Monday.
He added that almost all the staff of district health department is busy carrying activities under a special measles vaccination campaign that would be concluded on February 9. After that, the health department would finalise a series of measures to be taken to avoid a possible dengue fever outbreak in 2015, he said.
Dr. Rafiq, who has taken charge of the seat of DHO last month, said he could not find enough time as yet to frame a new strategy to avoid dengue fever outbreak because of anti-polio drive last month and on-going measles crash activity. From February 15, the teams of district health department would start working by using data of the previous year.
He, however, said the health department has decided to follow an effective strategy to avoid dengue-fever outbreak in the district in 2015. The first priority of the health department is to eliminate unnecessary water reservoirs in all seven tehsils of Rawalpindi district, including Taxila, Kahuta, Kallar Syedan, Gujar Khan, Kotli Sattian, Murree and Rawalpindi instead of carrying out sprinkling of larvicide on all of them, he said.
He added that the teams of health department would carry out activities to identify larvae of ‘aedes aegypti’ in water reservoirs that cannot be eliminated and sprinkling of larvicidal ‘Fanthion’ granules would be done only on reservoirs where the larvae are identified to destroy their breeding sites.
It is important that the health department has already marked well over 1700 points in the district where the unnecessary accumulation of water serves as the possible breeding sites for mosquitoes.
Dr. Rafiq said that almost all 46 union councils of Rawal Town have been declared as the high-risk areas regarding prevalence of dengue fever virus and it is worth mention that over 50 per cent of the confirmed cases of dengue fever in the district were reported from Rawal Town in last two years.
He added that in the first phase of working against dengue fever, the health department would launch a survey in rural areas of the district to locate unnecessary water accumulations and to sensitise population on measures to eliminate mosquitoes’ breeding sites.
He said that in every tehsil, deputy district health officer would supervise the activities to be carried out to identify and eliminate larvae of ‘aedes aegypti’. The teams of health department would eliminate the unnecessary water accumulations during the first phase of working in the field and search for the larvae in reservoirs that cannot be eliminated.