ISLAMABAD: Special Assistant to the Prime Minister on Health Dr. Zafar Mirza on Saturday asked private hospitals help to deal with the dengue outbreak in Punjab.
Chairing a meeting of private medical facilities representatives and owners in Islamabad, Dr. Zafar Mirza said that the current situation of dengue outbreak in the country has put additional burden on the already strained public sector hospitals.
He directed the private sector hospitals to help the government in tackling the emergency-like situation stemming from the spread of the mosquito borne-disease in order to provide relief to the common man.
He also assured that this public-private partnership will be taken to the next level where services can be provided to the masses, both by public and private sector healthcare facilities so that the poor won’t have to face financial constraints.
Private hospital owners in Islamabad and Rawalpindi assured full support to the government to overcome the dengue disease and said that their hospitals would accommodate indoor patients, which cannot be accommodated in the public sector hospitals. They also generously offered a required number of beds in their institutions for this purpose.
According to the Dengue Control Program, the number of dengue-affected patients across the country currently stands at 3,746 as per the data available to them.
According to the available data, 2,158 of the affected patients are from Punjab. 198 patients from different areas of the federal capital Islamabad have been brought to hospitals.
The new dengue patients brought to Punjab for treatment at different hospitals in the province included 127 patients from Rawalpindi while 19 from Lahore and 4 from other cities.
Ninety-one cases of dengue were reported in three districts of Balochistan in September, according to Balochistan’s Health Director-General Dr. Kamalan Ghichki.
The affected districts are Lasbela, Gwadar, and Kech. Lasbela has been the worst affected with 43 cases this month. There have been a total of 2,527 cases of dengue in Balochistan this year.
