ICT Health Dept gets approval for induction

Islamabad: Islamabad Capital Territory Health Department has finally got approval for induction of as many as 99 employees for prevention and control of communicable diseases including dengue fever in rural areas of the federal capital.

The Departmental Development Working Party approved the PC-1 for induction of 99 employees including surveillance officers, entomologists, assistant entomologists, sanitary inspectors, fog machine operators, environment inspectors along with male and female sanitary patrols.

Within a month or two, we would be able to initiate the process of induction of staff by advertising the posts and hopefully, by the month of July or August, the newly inducted staff would be available to the health department for carrying out activities in the field, said Additional District Health Officer at ICT Health Department Dr. Muhammad Najeeb Durrani while talking to ‘The News’ on Wednesday.

He said the health department has been working for induction of staff particularly to carry out field activities for prevention and control of communicable diseases including dengue fever for over a year and finally, “we have got approval”.

It is important that the ICT Health Department does not have any specified staff for dengue fever surveillance and had been deploying its staff including lady health workers and sanitary and malaria inspectors for field activities to avoid dengue fever outbreak for over a decade.

Last year, in January, the ICT Health Department sent a demand for induction of 170 personnel for strengthening surveillance against dengue fever and other communicable diseases but it did not receive any response from the ministry. To a query, Dr. Durrani said at present, the health department has a total of 12 team members while eight other members have been borrowed from other departments to raise 10 teams in all for carrying out preventive activities in the field and it is in no way sufficient for the purpose.

He said the ICT Health Department has applied for induction of staff for field activities in all 15 union councils in rural areas of the federal capital. It is worth mentioning here that in last two years, the population in the federal capital faced the worst ever dengue fever outbreak that claimed at least 10 lives. In 2016, well over 2600 patients were confirmed positive for the infection in Islamabad of which over 80 per cent were from rural areas of the federal capital. We hope that after induction of staff, the ICT health department would be able to run more effective campaigns against dengue fever and other communicable diseases, said Dr. Durrani.