Malaria outbreak has wreaked havoc in southern districts of Sindh, Minute Mirror learnt on Thursday.
As many as 65,782 confirmed malaria cases have been reported during the last two months in Thatta, Sujawal, Badin and Tando Muhammad Khan. Owing to the lack of precautionary measures by the Malaria Control program, after the recent flood in Sindh, a malaria outbreak has been reported in southern Sindh and a larger number of patients have arrived in the local hospitals but faced a host of problems due to a dearth of facilities. According to the sources the number of confirmed malaria cases in Thatta is 29,926, followed by 17,824 in Tando Muhammad Khan, 16,375 in Sujawal and 11,632 cases in District Badin during the month of September-October 2022.
Flood-hit three provinces of Pakistan in 2022 displacing 33 million and 18 districts being declared calamity-hit and the health infrastructure crumbled badly. Several areas of the province are still accumulated by stagnant water that has triggered diseases such as Malaria, Typhoid and Gastroenteritis with no effective measures taken by the government to curb its spread.
A rapid upsurge in reported malaria cases was observed after the floods. In Southern Sindh districts Tando Muhammad Khan, Thatta, Sujawal and Badin there were confirmed malaria cases in September 2022 reaching 65,782 compared to 69,123 cases reported in August in all over Sindh. It is worthwhile to mention that malaria control programs have failed to apply precautionary measures in these districts, however fumigation spray drive could not be carried out in flood-affected areas and the concerned department also failed to provide mosquito nets to the people of flood-affected areas causing a rise in malaria cases.
On the other hand, a national-level NGO NRSP in collaboration with Global Fund conducted Malaria screening in flood-affected areas of District Sujawal, Badin, Thatta and Tando Muhammad Khan of southern Sindh and provided the Malaria testing kits to local medical practitioners to diagnose the Malaria patient and also ensure the availability of anti-malarial medicine at health facilities of southern Sindh. District Health Officer Sujawal Ahmed Ali Palijo revealed that lack of awareness was one of the factors behind the swift spread of Malaria adding that medical camps had been set up in affected areas to curtail its further spread.
