LAHORE/BAHAWALPUR: Pneumonia is still wreaking havoc on children under the age of ten. In Punjab, 13 more children lost their lives to the terrible virus in the past 24 hours, bringing the province’s overall death toll from the illness to 392 since January 1.
In addition to frightening parents, the ongoing increase in pediatric pneumonia-related mortality has exposed Punjab’s caretaker administration and health officials, as none of them have taken urgent action to stop the high number of deaths that have occurred over the past six weeks.
The caretaker government initiated projects worth Rs90 billion to upgrade emergency and additional blocks of significant government teaching institutes in Lahore. The Young Doctors Association, Punjab, has been bringing up these issues, along with the deaths caused by pneumonia and the lack of medication provided to the impoverished patients in the hospitals. According to an official, despite a drop in frigid temperatures, the current deadly wave of deaths caused by pneumonia has taken a terrible turn.
According to him, 622 new instances of pneumonia have been reported in Punjab in the previous 24 hours—a startlingly high number that has alarmed the medical and health community.
Toll has increased to 392 since January 1; doctors blame inadequate oxygen and medications for the deaths, criticizing the concurrent upgrading of emergency.
He claimed that 131 of them had come from Lahore, bringing the overall count of pneumonia cases in Punjab since January 1 to 6,190.He claimed that hundreds of kids, primarily younger than five, were being admitted to both public and private healthcare facilities with serious chest infections.
The source bemoaned the closure of all emergency wards at the major teaching hospitals in Lahore, citing them as the result of renovations ordered by the acting chief minister.
He claimed that patients suffered while receiving treatment in store rooms, greenbelts, or hallways as a result of the simultaneous start of renovation projects at all hospitals. Three additional babies in Bahawalpur died on Sunday from pneumonia in the pediatric unit of the Bahawal Victoria Hospital (BVH).
Dawn was informed by BVH Medical Superintendent (MS) Dr. Aamir Mahmood Bokhari that the three had passed away on the previous day.
According to sources, the number of pediatric pneumonia deaths at the BVH this winter has increased to 41.
Dawn discovered that in the previous twenty-four hours, twenty more infants had been brought to the BVH with pneumonia attacks.
Meanwhile, Dr. Iftikhar Ahmd Bhatti, the president of the PMA’s Bahawalpur branch, asserted that a lack of oxygen in the hospital was the primary factor in the deaths of children with pneumonia.
In light of emergency instances, he asked the BVH administration to put pressure on the oxygen gas supplier to improve regular deliveries to the hospital.
Similar to other regions of the nation, Bahawalpur experienced a prolonged period of extreme cold for more than 30 days, leading to an increase in cases of pneumonia.
SOURCE: DAWN NEWS
