Writ filed in PHC seeks strategy to eliminate rats in Peshawar

PESHAWAR: The Peshawar High Court (PHC) has summoned Health Department director general to explain the government position in a writ petition that had sought an order for the government to immediately evolve a strategy to eliminate rats from hospitals, houses and fields.

A division bench comprising Chief Justice Yahya Afridi and Justice Ghazanfar Khan summoned the director general Health to the court next week. The case was fixed before a bench to be headed by Justice Qaiser Rashid Khan.

The bench was hearing a writ petition filed by Dr Hussain Ahmad Haroon, provincial president of Pakistan Medical Association, through his lawyer Saifullah Muhib Kakakhel. During the hearing, additional Advocate General Waqar Ahmad Khan submitted that the government was busy tackling the dengue virus in the province. He sought some time for submission of the report.

The petitioner is a doctor by profession and resides in Peshawar. He submitted in the petition that he had noticed rats in all the hospitals of the city and outside and causing dangerous diseases. It was stated that the matter involved in the petition was the growing number of fatalities among children at the hands of rats. He said Peshawar was flooded with the rats of the size of cats, which were in large numbers and had started biting the small children.

Interestingly, the petitioner pointed out that the only duty done by the respondents was that they had employed a person whose son was killed by rats on daily wages basis to kill rats by hand.

The petitioner pointed out that it was known to everybody that millions of people died due to plague caused by rats in Europe, India and other countries in the past. He said several other diseases like rabies, hepatitis, AIDS and others were caused by rats as well.

“The rats are also eating away the kitchen items in the houses, grain and vegetables in the fields. And if the rats were not controlled and killed, the time is not far away when a larger catastrophe may happen,” the petitioner said.