JEDDAH: Makkah province Health Affairs Director Dr. Khaled ibn Obaid Zafar announced on Tuesday that no case of dengue fever has been reported in the past seven months in the city of Makkah. The official attributed this to a government-sponsored drive to raise awareness about dengue fever in the holy city.
“Since the beginning of the campaign against the spread of the mosquito-transmitted disease about 31 weeks ago, not a single case of dengue fever has been registered,” he told Arab News.
The director added that in view of the recess in the spread of the dengue fever, the special lab to check new students and domestic employees will be shifted from its present location at Ibn Sina Hospital to the elementary health care center at Al-Zahir residential quarter starting Aug. 1. Makkah Health Affairs spokesman Faiq Muhammad Hussein said the decision to return the lab to its original location was taken after a coordination meeting between all concerned departments.
He said the lab would receive new students and house help daily from 4 p.m. to midnight. The awareness campaign in Makkah city has involved 220 graduates, including Burmese and Hausa expatriates, who have been going house-to-house to enlighten people in various districts in the city regarding dengue preventative measures.
“Two hundred Saudi and 20 non-Saudi university graduates have made 201,073 house visits to educate the public — including Saudis, expatriates and foreign visitors — about preventive measures against dengue fever,” said Dr. Abdul Hafeez Turkistani, assistant director general for primary health care and preventive medicine for Makkah province. Four-member teams make the visits to houses in the evening hours between 3 p.m. and 10 p.m. covering all districts in Makkah to distribute booklets and other educational materials, Turkistani said. The official said his department enlisted the collaboration of various commercial centers to organizing campaigns during seasonal festivals.
The official added that the anti-dengue campaign included quarter-page media ads in local newspapers in addition to distributing 25,000 newspaper inserts. A special issue of Basim magazine for children that focused on dengue was also distributed. The health authorities also requested that imams address the matter in mosques. Lectures were also arranged at offices of the Civil Defense and technical colleges, among other locations.
They also requested the concerned authorities take steps to print awareness messages against dengue on the receipts issued at ATMs and on the backs of electricity bills. More than 180,400 booklets, 228,948 stickers, 200,081 folders and 213,749 files were issued as part of the campaign, the official said.
