Health department for boosting drive against dengue virus

Health department has directed the concerned officers to accelerate anti-mosquito spray, fogging and larvicidal campaign for eliminating mosquitoes while special attention should be focused on those areas where most of the dengue cases were reported last year.
In this connection, a special meeting of medical superintendents of teaching hospitals here was held under the chairmanship of Additional Secretary Health (East), Dawood Muhammad Khan here Thursday.
Additional Secretary directed that all the concerned departments including TMA, Wasa should be taken on-board and collective efforts should be made for disposing off garbage/solid waste, removing stagnant water and spray activities. He directed all medical superintendents to remove stagnant water from the hospital premises. He directed hospital administration to adopt courteous attitude with the patients and pay full attention to their treatment. He directed that all diagnostic tests should be conducted on Eliza machines.
The superintendents were directed to nominate focal persons for dengue analyses in every hospital and send report regarding the number of dengue cases in time to the health department. Further, private pathological labs should also be brought into the network of reporting and surveillance for gathering correct data of dengue cases.
Dawood instructed that banners consisting of preventive slogans should be displayed in the hospitals for awareness of general public. He said that correct information should be given to the public through print and electronic media and precautionary measures should be conveyed to public through media to defuse their apprehensions and concerns about the disease. He said that government has provided free diagnostic and treatment facilities in all the hospitals for dengue patients and information regarding this fact must reach to the public through media.
Earlier, EDO Health Lahore briefed the participants of the meeting about fogging, Indoor Residual Spray (IRS) and larvicidal campaign. He said that most of the union councils have been covered. He hoped that with the effective measures timely taken by the health department, chances of outbreak of dengue fever would minimise.
Medical superintendents apprised the meeting of their arrangements for the treatment and diagnosis of dengue fever in their respective hospitals. The meeting was informed that Eliza machines and cell separators have been arranged at the teaching hospitals. Chief Bacteriologist Punjab, Dr Zarfishan Tahir told that Institute of Public Health Laboratory is providing Eliza test facility. Further, cell separators facility is also available at the directorate of blood transfusion.
DG Health, Aslam Chaudhry said that last year maximum number of dengue cases were reported from Lahore and keeping this experience in view, extraordinary preventive measures and other arrangements have been made so that the virus could be controlled. Besides all the medical superintendents of teaching hospitals, DG Health Punjab, Dr Aslam Chaudhry, EDO Health Lahore, Dr Umer Farooq Baloch, Director Health CDC, Dr Mubashar Malik and other concerned officers attended the meeting.