Malaria claims two lives as another dengue patient dies

Malaria claimed two more lives in Sindh, raising the death toll to eight this year in the province, while dengue claimed one more life in Karachi, taking the number of deaths in the city to 39, health officials said on Saturday.

“Two more people have died due to malaria in Sindh, one at Latif Colony Bhitshah and the other at Mirpurkhas. So far, eight people have lost their lives due to malaria in the province,” an official of the Sindh health department told The News.

A total of 4,504 malaria cases were reported in the last 24 hours from the entire province, and the majority of the cases were reported from Hyderabad division, followed by Larkana division, while dozens of malaria cases were also reported from Sukkur, Mirpurkhas and Nawabshah divisions, the official said.

According to WHO, daily thousands of malaria cases are being reported from Sindh where both the species of malaria -- Plasmodium vivax and Plasmodium Falciparum -- had started taking lives. WHO has urged the provincial government and the international community to work a lot more to prevent deaths due to vector-borne diseases, including malaria and dengue fever.

Meanwhile, one more person died due to complications of dengue fever in Karachi, bringing the total number of deaths due to dengue in Sindh to 43, including 39 in Karachi, the health department official said.

“A female patient under treatment at Dr Ziauddin Hospital North Nazimabad died during treatment at the hospital, whose death was reported to the health department day before yesterday. This is the 11th death in District East Karachi and 39th in entire Karachi so far,” the official added.

He maintained that 312 new cases of dengue fever were reported from the province during last 24 hours, including 249 from Karachi alone, adding that 38 dengue cases were reported from Hyderabad, 18 from Mirpurkhas and the remaining from other districts of the province.

Around 2,000 cases of dengue fever have been reported in the first eight days of the current month in Karachi, where officially over 10,500 dengue cases have been reported, but experts associated with private health facilities claim that the number of cases and deaths could be ten times higher than the official figures.