Amraiz Khan
Dengue larvae were discovered in more than 160,000 places across the provincial metropolis and the authorities concerned knew about it, revealed an investigation by the divisional administration.
The dengue hot spots were detected in the first seven months of this year, said the report. And this was in the knowledge of the former chief secretary and former health secretary.
The Lahore divisional administration found that dengue was spreading at an alarming rate because the surveillance teams were not working up to the mark. Their monitoring was done so poorly that they could not prepare accurate statistics.
Additionally, hospitals turned dengue wards into coronavirus wards and the dengue counters stopped working.
Government and private hospitals in Lahore were not sharing data of dengue cases they were receiving and private laboratories shared only 7 percent of data. The administration found dengue larvae in one out of every 206 households in Lahore.
The increase in the number of patients took place after the end of the previous monsoon rains.
After the Punjab chief minister said that more work needed to be done to battle dengue, medical teams visited household to household, checking for the presence of the larvae. Water samples from underground and overhead tanks were tested.
If larvae were detected a red sticker was affixed to the household so that insecticide teams could spray in a radius of 200 meters from the area.
