KARACHI: Different vector diseases are on the rise due to worsened sanitary conditions in this port city.

Specially, the rising cases of dengue and chikungunya continue to haunt citizens while public health authorities are clueless how to control mosquitoes, the main vector of these diseases.

The city has witnessed a rising trend of dengue and chikunguya at the government and private hospitals and clinics. Both diseases require a lot of money for proper treatment which many poor and low-income families could not afford, easily.

There is no special dengue and chikunguya wards in the government hospitals and the laboratory tests of both viral diseases are very much costly and many government hospitals too fail to provide free of cost treatment to such patients.

Sindh health and public health departments and the KMC are not able to control mosquitoes and overflowing gutters in many areas of the city and that is favourable breeding grounds for the disease-carrying vectors, especially houseflies and mosquitoes.

Karachi Mayor Waseem Akhtar said that the hospitals and dispensaries run by the Karachi Metropolitan Corporation, were providing treatment facilities to patients of dengue and chikungunya. He said fumigation process had already been under way in the city. However, he complained that the funds-starved KMC was not getting a judicious share of financial resources from the Sindh government.

Only affluent families can afford the expenses of dengue and other viral diseases in private hospitals. To facilitate low-income people of Karachi, there is a need to set up special viral disease treatment wards in the major government-run hospitals such as the Jinnah Postgraduate Medical Centre, Civil Hospital Karachi and Abbasi Shaheed Hospital.

A doctor at a reputed private hospital, on condition of anonymity, said that dozens of cases of dengue and chikungunya were reported to them every week, but they often provide the data of these patients to the government agencies very late. He said that malaria, dengue and chikungunya were widespread in coastal localities of Karachi including Lyari, Gizri, Korangi, Ibrahim Hyderi, Landhi and some parts of Malir. He said that hundreds of patients suffer from these diseases in poor slum areas but they do not visit private hospitals and clinics.

However, according to the Prevention and Control Program for Dengue in Sindh, from January 1 to August 7, 2017, a total 422 dengue fever cases were reported in Sindh province. Out of them, 410 were reported from Karachi, five from Hyderabad, five from Tharparkar/ Mithi and two from Umerkot. However, this program does not release the data of reported cases of chikungunya.

Munawar Ali, a retired government employee, told PPI that he and his wife suffered from the chikungunya, two weeks ago. He said they were still under treatment and not fully well, as yet. He said the chikunguya was a very agonizing disease and he could not offer prayers due to the severe joint pain.

Pakistan Medical Association (PMA) general secretary Dr Qaiser Sajjad has said that the PMA had been raising voice vis-à-vis rise in viral diseases in Karachi for a long time but the government was yet to take serious steps to overcome it. He said that Karachi needed a modern viral laboratory for early diagnosis of the viral diseases because, presently, blood samples of the suspected patients were sent to Islamabad for lab analysis, which was a time-consuming process.

The WHO says that the dengue has grown dramatically around the world in recent decades. The actual numbers of dengue cases are underreported and many cases are misclassified. One recent estimate indicates 390 million dengue infections per year of which 96 million manifest clinically (with any severity of disease). Another study, of the prevalence of dengue, estimates that 3.9 billion people, in 128 countries, are at risk of infection with dengue viruses.

Member States in the three regions of the WHO regularly report the annual number of cases. The number of cases reported increased from 2.2 million in 2010 to 3.2 million in 2015. Although the full global burden of the disease is uncertain, the initiation of activities to record all dengue cases partly explains the sharp increase in the number of cases reported in recent years.

Other features of the disease include its epidemiological patterns, including hyper-endemicity of multiple dengue virus serotypes in many countries and the alarming impact on both human health and the global and national economies.

Before 1970, only 9 countries had experienced severe dengue epidemics. The disease is now endemic in more than 100 countries in the WHO regions of Africa, the Americas, the Eastern Mediterranean, South-East Asia and the Western Pacific. The America, South-East Asia and Western Pacific regions are the most seriously affected.

An estimated 500,000 people with severe dengue require hospitalization each year, and about 2.5% of those affected die, says WHO.

However, Sindh health minister Dr Sikander Mandhro has taken notice of it and ordered to provide all required medicines to the government hospitals for treatment of vector diseases including dengue and chikungunya.—PPI