PESHAWAR: Two more patients died of dengue on Saturday in Peshawar, rising death toll from the mosquito-born disease to seven in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.
Two girls, identified as Nabeela, 17, and Remshah, 13, were stated to the latest victims of the dengue in the provincial capital. They belonged to Bahadar Kalley in suburbs of Peshawar. The provincial Health Department as usual refused to admit that the two girls died of dengue virus. From day one when dengue outbreak has been reported in Peshawar, the Health Department has been in a state of denial. According to officials of the Health Department, more than 2500 people had been diagnosed with dengue positive. However, medical consultants in the three tertiary care hospitals- Lady Reading Hospital, Khyber Teaching Hospital and Hayatabad Medical Complex told The News that there is no doubt the situation this year is far better than of 2017, still hundreds of patients have been suffering from dengue virus in Peshawar and other districts of the province. “I don’t know why the government and particularly the health department is still denying dengue outbreak in the province. Also, the health department deliberately tried to hide deaths caused by dengue and attributed to other complications,” said a senior consultant in KTH.
Pleading anonymity, he said it was true that most of the patients admitted to hospitals for dengue fever are often having other complications but it is dengue fever that causes their death. “It is not the situation that we faced in 2017 but even then the health department is clueless how to handle it. I suspect the government this time is hiding actual data of the patients and those died of the dengue virus,” he said.
