Doctors worried as Peshawar hospitals flooded with dengue patients

PESHAWAR: The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government and the provincial Health department seem to be unaware of the dengue endemic that has caused havoc in some districts, particularly the provincial city of Peshawar, where hospitals are flooded with patients suffering from the mosquito-borne disease.

The doctors in the three medical teaching institutions (MTIs), including Lady Reading Hospital (LRH), Khyber Teaching Hospital (KTH) and Hayatabad Medical Complex (HMC), are shocked over the present data of dengue patients and fatalities caused by the disease.

“The data provided to the media by the Health department is completely wrong and too small of the actual number of dengue patients and subsequent human losses. In KTH alone, we receive over 500 dengue patients in the Emergency department,” a trainee medical officer (TMO) of the medicine department in KTH told The News on Monday.

Pleading anonymity, he claimed that dozens of patients had lost their lives as a result of dengue in the past one month but the death figures did not appear in the media.

“I don’t know why the government is hiding the endemic and human losses from the media and public,” he said.

The physician criticised the Health department and its surveillance system to collect actual data during endemic and pandemic.

“I myself tested positive for dengue fever but am working nonstop in the Emergency department. Most of the patients are coming to us from suburbs of Peshawar including University Town, Tehkal, Regi and Sufaid Dheri,” said the medical consultant.

The provincial Health department has so far reported six human losses from the dengue virus in KP.

The doctors in the three tertiary care hospitals in Peshawar were not convinced, saying more than 100 people had died of the disease since its outbreak.

Chief Minister Mahmood Khan though otherwise avoids interfering in health sector as he doesn’t want to offend Dr Nausherwan Burki, cousin of Prime Minister Imran Khan and the de facto health minister in KP, it seemed he was perturbed by the mismanagement in health sector and removed the district health officer (DHO) Peshawar.

The Health department is seen nowhere since the dengue outbreak in KP and particularly in Peshawar.

All the three hospitals in Peshawar are filled to capacity. The Emergency departments of the hospitals are always flooded with patients, the majority of them suffering from dengue fever.

The situation of HMC and LRH isn’t different from KTH, where patients’ flow had multiplied in the past few months.

“The problem is that every dengue patient wants to be admitted in the hospital, even most of them don’t need hospitalization. They don’t understand that beds are already occupied,” a physician in HMC told The News.