PESHAWAR: Reports about a suspected case of cholera sparked panic in Swat valley on Saturday.Even the prime minister referred to the report in his address to the nation.
Alarm bells started ringing among welfare organisations working in the flood-ravaged regions across Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.
But the Director-General of Health, Dr Sajid Shaheen, contradicted the report about confirmation of a cholera case in Mingora, saying that health teams deputed in the affected areas had been reporting complaints of watery diarrhoea, but there was no report of cholera as yet.
“The situation is extremely precarious in Swat, but our teams have established a surveillance system to check epidemics,” he said.
“People are suffering from acute watery diarrhoea but the situation is under control.”
In reply to a statement attributed to a UN official about cholera in Swat, he said “we are prepared to cope with the situation and such reports tend to cause alarm”.
Dr Bakht Jamal, Swat’s top health official, said a two-year-old child, Asad, had been hospitalised due to diarrhoea. Stool samples from Asad and his brother had been sent for tests, he said on telephone from Swat.
“There has been at least one confirmed case of cholera in Mingora,” Mr Maurizio Giuliano, a spokesman for the UN Office for Humanitarian Affairs, was quoted by a western news agency as saying. But Mr Giuliano later said he had been misquoted.
“The ministry of health has not notified us of any confirmed case of cholera. However, cholera is endemic in this region, and in the current emergency situation it is expected that cholera cases might occur sporadically amongst the susceptible population in the affected areas.
“Therefore the threat from cholera in the flood affected communities remains high. In order to avoid excess mortality, it is important that all acute watery diarrhoea (AWD) cases with severe dehydration have easy and rapid access to treatment. At this time, at least 36,000 cases of suspected AWD have been reported.”
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