KARACHI: After a month-long respite from dengue deaths, the city alarmingly recorded three more deaths caused by the virus over the past three days while yet another death — the first one outside Karachi — was reported by a Hyderabad hospital, bringing this year’s death toll in the province to 10, officials said on Tuesday.
The officials added that out of the three patients who died in the metropolis two were women.
One of them, an 18-year-old woman, died in Manghopir on Saturday just a day after she had been admitted to a hospital, said the provincial dengue surveillance cell.
The other woman was 63. She belonged to a neighbourhood near M.A. Jinnah Road. She too had been admitted on Friday to a hospital where she died on Sunday, according to the dengue surveillance cell.
The following day a 20-year-old resident of Lyari died at a hospital where he had been brought a day earlier.
The officials said all the three patients had developed complications when they were brought for treatment. They said the deaths had been reported to them late Monday. In Hyderabad, a 40-year-old man who had been admitted to Liaquat Medical College Hospital on Thursday expired on Tuesday, the officials said.
The officials and health experts feared more casualties in the absence of an effective vector control programme, citing that monsoon was still not over. They agreed that the frequency of dengue-related deaths was alarming.
Earlier, six deaths caused by dengue had been reported from Gulshan-i-Iqbal, Gulistan-i-Jauhar, Orangi, North Karachi and New Karachi.
A majority of the victims of dengue fever in Sindh comprised the people in their prime age. The aggregate age of the 10 victims died so far this year is 32.9. The youngest victim was an 18-year-old girl from Manghopir and the oldest was a 68-year-old man from Gulshan-i-Iqbal.
The government had earlier identified North Nazimabad, SITE, Clifton Cantonment, Saddar Town and Gulistan-i-Jauhar as the ‘vulnerable areas’ and decided to give them ‘special attention’.
841 dengue fever cases
According to the data compiled by the dengue surveillance cell, 841 dengue cases have been reported in Sindh so far this year. Most cases have been reported in Karachi, barring 31 from rest of the province.
Last year more than 700 cases of dengue fever were reported out of which four people, including a woman, died.
In 2011, 858 dengue cases and 16 deaths caused by the virus had been reported from Karachi.
So far over 10,000 cases of dengue have been confirmed since 1994 when its first outbreak had engulfed Karachi. Since then the city remained safe from it until it returned with severity in 2005 and became a regular feature manifesting lethally in summer months before going into hibernation for a few winter months.
The 1994 dengue outbreak had affected 145 people — one of whom died. It killed 16 in 2005 and 49 people in 2006 — the deadliest year over the past two decades.
According to the World Health Organization, dengue is world’s fastest-spreading tropical disease and represents a ‘pandemic threat’, infecting an estimated 50 to 100 million people.
Transmitted by the bite of female mosquitoes, the disease is occurring more widely due to increased movement of people and goods — including carrier objects such as bamboo plants and used tyres — as well as floods linked to climate change, the United Nations agency said.
The viral disease, which affected only a handful of areas in the 1950s, is now present in more than 125 countries — significantly more than malaria, historically the most notorious mosquito-borne disease.
The most advanced vaccine against dengue is only 30 per cent effective, last year trials showed.