Sindh Chief Minister Syed Qaim Ali Shah has approved Rs 274.982 million for first-ever Dengue Prevention & Control Programme for next three years. He took this decision while chairing a meeting of Health Department here, said a statement on Thursday. Briefing the meeting, Sindh Secretary Health Saeed Mangnijo said that Dengue is endemic in more than 110 countries and infects 50 to 528 million people all over the world annually as over 25,000 deaths are reported world-wide due to the disease.
This increase is believed to be due to a combination of urbanisation, population growth, increased international travel and global warming, he said. He said first major outbreak in Pakistan occurred in 2010 when 4,072 cases were reported in Sindh and 5,400 in Punjab. In 2011 Punjab faced the worst type of epidemic with 21,000 cases and 350 deaths while in Sindh, the reported cases were 1,079 with 18 deaths.
He recalled that last year 3,692 cases were reported in Sindh with 11 deaths, while in Punjab more than 5000 cases were reported with 40 deaths. He said that the Punjab government has launched a full-fledged Dengue programme in 2010. Sindh health department has controlled the dengue to some extent even then a separate Dengue control programme is necessary to launch, he added.
The Secretary said that from January 2106 to February 24, some 217 dengue cases were reported in Karachi, of them 132 were admitted in hospitals and 85 were given treated in OPD. In Hyderabad one patient and Shaheed Benazirabad one patient were admitted. "With the grace of God no death has occurred so far," he said. Giving data from 2010 to 2016, Secretary Health Saeed Mangnijo said that 17,039 dengue cases were reported in the province, of them 106 had lost their lives.
The Sindh CM taking policy decision approved Rs 274.982 million for launching Dengue Prevention & Control Programme. The programme envisaged active surveillance by collecting data from all public and private hospitals would be conducted, Isolation wards in all government hospitals to be established, eight cell separator machines to be installed in all Tertiary care hospitals, dengue diagnostic kits and platelet mega units would be provided in all government hospitals. From the next year, this programme would be a part of ADP and to be operated on full scale.
The meeting was attended by Senior Minister for Finance & Energy Syed Murad Ali Shah, Minister Health Jam Mehtab Dahar, Chief Secretary Siddique Memon, Principal Secretary Alamuddin Bullo, Additional Chief Secretary (Dev) Mohammad Waseem, Secretary Health Saeed Mangnijo, Secretary Finance Sohail Rajput, programme managers and project directors of different programmes and schemes and others.
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