PESHAWAR: Kohat has become the third district of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa after Peshawar and Charsadda to record more than 1,000 cases of dengue haemorrhagic fever in the current year.
According to the latest weekly report released by Integrated Diseases Surveillance and Response System of Directorate of General Health Services, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, the provincial tally of confirmed dengue patients has reached 1,690 with Kohat district recording 1,023 cases.
The report said that 168 new dengue cases were confirmed by laboratory tests in the province this week. It is the highest number of dengue cases recorded by the province in any week in the current year.
The report said that Kohat recorded 80 more infections, Peshawar 42 and Bannu 11 cases. So far, Kohat is leading with 1,023 patients, followed by Peshawar with 316, Bannu with 90, Haripur with 54, Nowshera with 22, Charsadda and Abbottabad with 19 cases each, Khyber with 17, Dera Ismail Khan with 15, Swabi with 14, Bajaur with 12, Mansehra with 11 and Swat, Buner and Karak with 10 cases each.
Health department concerned over lacklustre response of MTIs
Till 2024, Peshawar continued to record bulk of dengue cases, mostly above 1,000 per year along with deaths from the mosquito-borne ailment. Cases were reported from localities known for the disease and the hospitals admitted scores of patients in isolated wards where they received symptomatic treatment.
However, last year, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa recorded more than 6,000 dengue cases, mostly in Charsadda district where an outbreak infected more than 1,000 persons in two union councils. Only four deaths were recorded in 2025 in the province, down from seven in 2024.
The current year has witnessed a spike in infections from Kohat which has already been identified as a public health issue by the teams associated with anti-dengue activities.
In August, health department had warned that Afghan refugee camps, demolished by the administration, served as breeding points for mosquitoes. The department had requested the administration to level the camps keeping in view the threat of dengue outbreak.
Similar requests had also been sent to the administration in Haripur in Mansehra where same situation existed. However, sources in the department said that their requests to do away with ditches in the deserted refugee camps had fallen on deaf ears and most cases in Kohat were being reported from the surrounding areas.
Almost every year, health department establishes isolation wards in hospitals for dengue patients but the problem continues till temperature gets down to a level when mosquitoes cannot survive and cases vanish till next year when temperature becomes favourable.
The department has also established isolation wards at district level hospitals and medical teaching institutions (MTIs) in Peshawar this year. Officially, there is neither any death nor any patient hospitalised due to dengue so far but sources in the department said that they were upset by the lacklustre response of MTIs that were not sharing line-lists of patients with them.
In the previous year, the department heavily banked on the information provided by MTIs and strategies were put in place to carry out contact tracing in the endemic areas due to which outbreaks were prevented. “This year, the peak season of the disease is in progress that will last till the end of October and MTIs are required to start cooperation with the department,” they said.
Sources said that in Kohat production of mosquitoes continued to rise due to water pools and cases would further swell and outbreak might turn violent if immediate measures were not taken. Health department is also concerned over lack of coordinated efforts by line departments in line with the Dengue Action Plan 2026 due to which desirable environment for mosquitoes prevailed.
Published in Dawn, September 27th, 2026
