LAHORE: Dengue experts have rubbished the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf’s (PTI) accusations levelled against Pakistan Muslim League Nawaz (PML-N) leader Arbab Khizer Hayat of purposefully providing a favourable environment for the growth of dengue mosquito larvae at his residency.
PTI’s official twitter account on Saturday posted news clipping from a local newspaper claiming that the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) health department team had found dengue larvae from PML-N leader Arbab Khizer Hayat’s house. The clipping stated that the larvae were found from the air cooler placed in his house.
However, medical experts labelled these accusations as unreasonable and baseless.
Punjab Dengue Expert Advisory Group Member Dr Muhammad Zaman Khan said that a typical dengue mosquito’s lifetime flight radius is less than 200 meters. “Therefore, if a dengue mosquito is found somewhere, it can only infect the locality within the 200m range and thus it can’t be responsible for the outbreak all over KP,” he added.
Dr Zaman Khan, who is also the focal person for dengue at Lahore Jinnah Hospital, further said that such political statements were made in 2012 as well. “It is a clear incompetency of the KP health department as it was the case in Punjab in 2012,” he asserted.
He argued that the actual reasons behind the sudden outbreak of dengue in KP were the uncovered water reserves and lack of regulation by the provincial authorities.
Dr Soma Saeed, who is a medical officer at the Jinnah hospital, also dismissed these claims by arguing that if larvae of dengue mosquito were found at a certain place, it doesn’t ascertain purposeful growth. “Since dengue is already prevalent in KP, there is a possibility for it to be found anywhere,” she said.
According to the official report of KP health department, as reported by Pakistan Today on Friday, around 60,000 suspected dengue cases were reported in 13 districts of KP. The report said that 12,632 patients tested positive for the virus from among 60,665 patients screened from a total of 60,807 reported cases.
The department has confirmed 45 deaths from the mosquito-borne viral disease throughout the province, while around 400 patients were under treatment in different hospitals.
