Khyber Pakhtunkhwa [Pakistan], July 20 : Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa is on alert after the death of an Afghan national from the Crimean Congo Haemorrhagic fever in Peshawar and the rising incidence of the tick-borne viral disease, Dawn reported.
Dawn is a Pakistani English-language newspaper.
Health officials have told Dawn that eight Congo fever cases had been reported in the province with three of them under treatment at Peshawar’s Hayatabad Medical Complex (HMC) and one at the capital city’s Khyber Teaching Hospital.
The officials claimed that the HMC, a medical teaching institution, didn’t have any isolation ward for people infected with Congo fever, who were being “managed” in a private room.
Medical director at the HMC, Professor Shehzad Akbar Khan, denied the claim and said it was incorrect that the complex had no isolation facility for such cases.
“All arrangements are in place to manage Congo cases. We [HMC] have got just one [Congo fever] patient, who is admitted to a separate private room in line with the guidelines,” he said, as per Dawn.
A report from the health department meanwhile said that an Afghan national died of Congo fever at the Khyber Teaching Hospital on July 8, while another patient of the viral disease was under treatment at the hospital.
It added that three virus victims had been admitted to the HMC with each of them under treatment in a private room, an emergency room and a medical ward.
The report said that eight people aged from 22 to 65 years, including one woman, had so far been diagnosed with the fever in the province.
According to health officials, a Congo fever patient left the hospital against the doctors’ advice as he was kept in a private room along with another patient.
They said no one knew about the patient's whereabouts.
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