Campaign against dengue to be launched next week

Rawalpindi: The district health department is busy finalising arrangements for launching an effective larvae identification and elimination campaign against dengue fever while to date, a total of five patients have already been confirmed positive for the infection from the district.

The teams of the district health department have already been assigned the task of surveillance against dengue fever in all tehsils of the district and a staff of around 1500 employed for carrying out prevention and control activities to avoid dengue fever spread would be in the field within the next week, said District Officer Health Dr. Ehsan Ghani while talking to ‘The News’ on Sunday. He added that a total of five patients have so far tested positive for dengue fever from Rawalpindi this year.

He said the teams of the health department would have staff from the district allied departments as well and we hope that over 1300 teams would be working in the field from the next week to eliminate larvae of ‘aedes aegypti’, the vector that causes dengue fever and adult mosquitoes.

He said the district health department has already listed hot spots that may serve as possible breeding sites for larvae of mosquitoes. The listed hot spots are being treated with chemicals to avoid larvae breeding and the surveillance activities at the points are being monitored on a regular basis. The health department is updating the lists of hot spots on a regular basis, he said.

As soon as all the teams of the health department would be in the field, the campaign against dengue fever would get intensified, he said. He added that the health department has planned to take strict legal action against those who would not give due attention to the elimination of breeding sites on their premises.

He said the owners of under-construction buildings and vacant plots would be held responsible for not taking adequate preventive measures on their premises. The teams of the health department would be appointed in all union councils of Rawalpindi district and in wards of cantonment areas to avoid a possible outbreak of the infection, said Dr. Ghani.

He said the health department has marked around 8000 points as hot spots however the points are being revised on a regular basis. The health department has planned to focus on the treatment of unnecessary water reservoirs all across the district with the help of chemicals to avoid larval breeding.

He said the health department is giving much attention to surveillance against dengue fever in high-risk areas from where a greater number of confirmed cases of dengue fever were reported in 2022 like Chak Jalal Din and Adyala Road. It is important that the population in Rawalpindi district faced one of the worst dengue fever outbreaks last year, in 2022 in which well over 4800 confirmed cases of the infection were reported from the district. The infection claimed at least three lives from Rawalpindi, the number that was registered at the allied hospitals.