Mismanagement in the Sindh Health Department continues since the new health secretary has joined the office and most health department officials are unaware of the most important issues related to the department.
Due to this mismanagement, most health department officials are misleading the media on several important issues, such as dengue fever cases in Karachi. The relevant officials either have no information regarding the issue at all or they are deliberately misleading the media.
On Monday, some health department officials issued alerts on television channels that seven new cases of dengue fever had been confirmed in the metropolitan and, thus, the total number of dengue cases in Sindh had reached 141 since January this year.
When this scribe contacted the Dengue Surveillance Cell (DSC) to find out the victims’ names and which hospital they had been admitted in, DSC in-charge Dr Suresh Kumar said that he did not have the details.
“Let me try to obtain the details and get back to you,” Kumar had said at 5:00 pm. After consulting all the officials of the cell, he told this scribe at 9:30 pm that he had been unable to note the victims’ names, the names of the hospitals where they had been admitted and other relevant details.
Most television channels continued to telecast the news of seven confirmed patients of dengue in the city all day, but despite that, health department officials have yet to disclose the names and other details of the victims. The media is being misled in not only dengue cases, but several other important issues of the health department.