The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Health Department has issued advisory guidelines for preventing the ophthalmia (pink-eye) epidemic that spread across the province. In a notification issued here to the entire medical superintendents here on Saturday directed to display banners on prominent places depicting necessary preventive measures for preventing ophthalmia.
It has also been directed to ensure availability of stock medicines and to adopt precautionary measures against the epidemic for hospitals’ employees. The KP Health Deptt. has also devised a comprehensive plan to start an awareness campaign against the pink-eye epidemic in government schools. Meanwhile, the medical experts appealed to people to avoid rubbing the affected eye with their hands and ensure their hands hygeine.
They asked to use a clean towel and not to share it with anyone. Women have also been instructed to avoid use of cosmetics being used in eye makeup to protect against the disease. The steps have been taken in view of the increasing number of pink-eye affected patients in the hospitals specially school going children.
It was worth mentioned here that patients infected with conjunctivitis an inflammation of the transparent membrane that lines the eyelid and eyeball continue to report at city’s public and private health facilities in large numbers more than a week after the disease turned into a major outbreak, it emerged.
Speaking senior ophthalmologists linked the spread of the highly contagious eye disease to weather conditions that seemed to have worsened air quality, poor hand hygiene, crowded housing system and filthy conditions in the thickly populated city. “We are still getting worryingly high numbers of patients that constitute almost half of the cases that report at our out-patient department,” shared Prof Nisar Ahmed Siyal, senior ophthalmologist and head of the department at Ojha Institute of Ophthalmology, part of the Dow University of Health Sciences (DUHS).
He said that the highly contagious disease seemed to have affected young adults and children more. “That’s perhaps because they have an increased frequency of social interaction and maintain poor hand hygiene.”
