Malaria cases surge in Sindh

KARACHI: Sindh is seeing growing numbers of malaria cases this month in every division, particularly lower Sindh, forcing the caretaker chief minister to direct the officials concerned to prepare a province-specific action plan to counter the mosquito-borne illness, ARY News reported.

Taking notice of rising malaria cases, the caretaker chief minister has directed health ministry and local government department to control the disease within one week and run campaign against malaria.

Official figures showed that 286,317 cases of high fever were reported at health facilities in the province this month.

Of them, 64,519 patients tested positive for malaria — an increase of 31 per cent as compared to last month, which saw 49,112 cases.

Most of these cases, according to the official data, are reported in Hyderabad division (31,891) followed by Mirpurkhas division (18,553), Larkana division (8,476), Sukkur division (2,595), Shaheed Benaziarabad (2,530) and Karachi division (474).

The most affected districts were Thatta (10,182) followed by Mirpurkhas (9,621), Umarkot (6,195), Hyderabad (6,531), Larkana (4,512), Dadu (3,188), Shikarpur (2,000) Jamshoro (2,242) Badin (4,399), Sujawal (2,681), Tando Allah Yar (1,202) and Tharparkar (2,737).

Official figures show that there has been a gradual increase in malaria cases over the months and the province has reported 247,799 malaria cases from January till August.