The Pneumonia has become viral and played havoc in the largest province of the country, Punjab, where at least 258 children lost their lives due to this endemic disease during the first 27 days of the current calendar month. Whereas some 15000 people were infected of Pneumonia. During the last 48 hours, some 1000 cases have been added to the tally.
If we look at the situation then we will come to know that on average 10 children die every day due to the disease, which shows how grim the situation prevails in the province.
The medical experts are of the opinion that dry and acute winter is the main cause that the disease proliferated in Punjab, as the general public especially old people and children became sick, due to not adopting the precautionary measures. The dry weather is due to lack of rain this winter, which is not only dangerous for the human health but also damaging for the crops too.
Commonly, Pneumonia is not considered an epidemic disease but it affects other people to some extent. It begins with the cold, flu and fever and if the patient would not give proper attention towards it, then it disturbs the respiratory system (function of lungs) in the human body. At this stage the patient feels trouble in breathing with the rising temperature and acute cough.
The Pneumonia cases are seen mostly in the fog and smog hit areas, that includes some eight districts of Central Punjab. The government should inform the people of those areas that they should wear warm clothes and use face masks while going out from their homes, especially the bikers.
As a matter of fact, the Punjab government was not ready for this attack of Pneumonia. The hospitals of the province even in the large cities have not adequate medicines to control the virus at once despite the fact that the Punjab government is incurring huge budgets to provide the healthcare facilities to the people. The sudden break out of the Pneumonia in Punjab exposed the Punjab health department.
Though the caretaker government of Punjab is giving focus to improve the health infrastructure, the fine-looking buildings of the hospitals are useless, if the people would not get the better medical treatment facilities there. It looks that as usual the funds for the health sector went to the personal foreign bank accounts of a few corrupt high-ups of the government.
The negligence of those departments, who are at helm of affairs of public dealing has reached to that level that it has become the second habit of these institutions, that they do not get prepare for any occurrence, whether it is any natural calamity or spreading of any infectious syndrome before time, and when the difficult situation come and bring huge devastation with it, then after facing all the heavy losses due to it, they realize to find out the solution of that particular problem.
If the hospitals of one big province are not in the position to keep check on a limited wave of Pneumonia infection, then it is the matter of ponder for the government to take action against the authorities responsible to provide the healthcare facilities to the people or at least they should be asked about the usage of hefty funding, allocated for the purpose. It might be dishonesty or carelessness of the government officials, but in the end, the ultimate sufferer is always the public.