Admin holds emergency meeting on dengue situation

PESHAWAR: The administration on Monday held an emergency meeting about the dengue situation in the provincial metropolitan a day after some village and neighbourhood chairmen warned of staging a sit-in protest outside the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Assembly.

The LG representatives had asked the government to utilize all resources to control the spread of the dengue virus and direct the departments concerned to start a fumigation campaign across the provincial capital.

Peshawar Division Commissioner Riaz Khan Mehsud chaired the meeting about the dengue situation in the provincial metropolitan.The meeting was attended by Deputy Commissioners of Peshawar, Nowshera, Charsadda and Khyber districts.

Peshawar Mayor Zubair Ali and Health Department officials of the districts attended the meeting as well.The participants of the meeting directed the District Health Officer of Peshawar to compile data on the dengue-infected patients to identify whether the infected patients

are local or the source is somewhere else in the province.

All the health centres were directed to allocate an isolation ward where the patients can be kept for at least seven days. The meeting directed officials to identify the hotspots and to take concrete steps to control their spread.It decided to launch the indoor and outdoor drive for eliminating the dengue larva and the surveillance of the hotspots.

All the deputy commissioners were asked to hold daily meetings about the dengue situation in their respective districts and issue directives for necessaryactions.The administrations were directed to nominate focal persons for surveillance of dengue in the districts.

Commissioner Peshawar Riaz Khan Mehsud said that he would personally monitor the dengue situation in all the districts. He directed the launching of the mass awareness campaign in the Peshawar division.

A day before, the village and neighbourhood chairmen had alleged that the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government had a dishonest approach to the issues in the province.They had claimed that the dengue could have been handled effectively had the government not blocked the funds of the local governments.

The LG representatives had warned of a sit-in outside the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Assembly building if the KP government did not take immediate steps to control the spread of the dengue virus.