Dengue death toll soars to 43

PESHAWAR: Another patient died of dengue in the provincial capital and the virus infected 312 more people in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa on Wednesday, said the provincial Health Department.

Mira Khan, 80, was admitted to the Khyber Teaching Hospital (KTH) on September 30 with high fever where he was diagnosed with dengue and subsequently died.

He belonged to Naudeh Payan of Arbab Road in Peshawar.

With him, the death toll from the mosquito-borne disease in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa climbed to 43.

The dengue virus was first reported in Peshawar in July this year and the majority of people who died of this disease belonged to Tehkal, Pishtakhara ?and Sufaid Dheri union councils.

The virus infected thousands of people in KP’s many districts, including Peshawar, Nowshera, Mardan, Swabi, Kohat, Haripur, Abbottabad, Mansehra, Buner, Dir, and Charsadda.

The government declared dengue emergency in the province and started providing free screening, investigations and medicines to all the dengue-affected people in the public sector hospitals of the province.

A health expert in KTH said that most of the elderly people who died of dengue had other health issues but since they were diagnosed with dengue their names were put on the list of those dying of the mosquito-borne disease.

According to the Dengue Response Unit(DRU), set up at the provincial Health Department for facilitation of dengue patients besides providing information to media, said that 1,651 patients were taken to different hospitals of the province of whom 312 tested positive.

It said that 115 of them were admitted in the hospitals while 93 patients were discharged after recovery.