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Friday July 25, 2025

Dengue fever spread in region cannot be ruled out

By Muhammad Qasim
May 07, 2022

Rawalpindi : Dengue fever spread in this region of the country cannot be ruled out as some five patients have already been confirmed positive from Rawalpindi district and Islamabad Capital Territory so far this year while the number of patients confirmed positive from the Punjab province has crossed the figure of 75.

Data collected by ‘The News’ on Friday has revealed that to date, as many as three patients have been confirmed positive for dengue fever from Rawalpindi while two from ICT. The Department of Infectious Diseases (DID) here at Holy Family Hospital in town received only one confirmed case of dengue fever while the other two patients from the district were reported at a private hospital in the federal capital.

One of the two patients reported from ICT is from the rural area of the federal capital while the other is a resident of the urban area. Both two patients received treatment at Quaid-e-Azam Hospital in Islamabad.

According to health experts, the situation is well under control at the time but still, the possibility of the spread of dengue fever in this region of the country cannot be ruled out as the infection may move to town from other parts of the country, particularly from endemic areas in Punjab province.

It is alarming that as many as 40 confirmed dengue fever patients have already been reported from Lahore, the provincial capital of Punjab.

The dengue mosquitoes both ‘aedes aegypty’ and ‘aedes albopictus’ are vectors for causing dengue fever as the female mosquitoes carry one of the four types of dengue virus from the dengue patient to the healthy person and transmit the disease. Rising temperature, humidity, rainfall, artificial flooding, man-made watering of lawns, fields, and water spillage, are the genuine factors besides the movement of infected patients from areas where there has recently been an outbreak of dengue fever to cause the spread of the infection and its outbreak.

Experts believe that the conditions have already become conducive for mosquitoes’ growth and the infected patients are already there to infect the dengue fever vector and which may cause the spread of the infection from one district to the other.

Experts say that it is high time for taking precautionary measures to avoid dengue fever and individuals must follow steps to eliminate possible breeding sites of mosquitoes inside homes and offices.

It is worth mentioning here that the outbreak of dengue fever in Pakistan triggered a serious alarm for the first time during a spike of the infection in 2006 that started within areas of Sindh in June 2006 and later spread up to Punjab and the federal capital. During that outbreak that lasted for nearly four months, the NIH had confirmed well over 3,000 positive cases of dengue fever that had claimed more than 35 lives, the figure that was reported.