PESHAWAR - A meeting of Provincial Oversight Committee for Control of Dengue was held here with Chief Secretary Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Dr. Kazim Niaz in the chair.
The meeting was attended by Secretaries of Home & Tribal Affairs, Local Government, Health, Higher Education, Information, Irrigation, E&SE, PHE, Relief & rehabilitation departments, besides Director General Health Services and Director Health Merged Areas, Secretary Health Yahya Akhunzada.
While briefing the meeting, it was informed that an anti-dengue campaign had been started across the province and 24000 rapid testing kits were dispatched to all the districts of the province and awareness activities and training of the relevant staff had already been completed. However, due to the corona pandemic, they had to divert their attention towards dealing corona.
He further informed that the process of recruitment of entomologists was in progress while the purchase of larvicide was also in pipeline.
Speaking on the occasion, Chief Secretary Dr. Kazim Niaz directed that a dengue cell comprising officers from Public Health Engineering, Agriculture and other departments be established at district level which will be responsible to help out the health department in coordinating and organizing the anti-dengue campaign and this cell will report to the respective Deputy Commissioners on daily basis.
The Chief Secretary further directed that the PHE department would ensure the regular supply of drinking water so that the people may not reserve water in their homes which was a great source of development of larva.
The Local Government Department was further directed to ensure the spray of larvicide in the stagnant water while all the government functionaries will be responsible for keeping their office premises dry so that growth of larva could be checked.
The Chief Secretary instructed the Secretary Information to prepare an aggressive communication strategy and launch a widespread awareness campaign on print, electronic and social media so that all precautionary measures could be taken to check the dengue well in time.