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Pin the tail on the disease: ‘Treatment before medical tests can endanger patients’

* Allama Iqbal Medical College principal says medication discouraged in dengue cases
* Sir Ganga Ram MS says patients with uncontrollable fever should visit public hospital directly
* Jinnah Hospital MS says quacks give two or three drugs with view that at least one will work

By Afnan Khan

LAHORE: Speculation based treatment methodology, as adopted by numerous general practitioners, may endanger the lives of dengue and malaria patients, which is why it is necessary to test a patient before providing medication, say specialist doctors.

Allama Iqbal Medical College Principal Professor Dr Javed Akram told Daily Times that dengue was not generally a dangerous strain, especially compared to the other deadly infections that are common in our society. He said that dengue was easily treatable with the right prescription and the consumption of liberal amounts of fluids. He also said that general practitioners should look at the symptoms and take the proper tests for the suspected disease instead of depending on experience and guesses. The practice of giving medication without taking tests to confirm is against professional ethics and patients should insist on taking tests before starting any medication, he added. “Provision of medication against a malarial parasite infection can be dangerous for a person who is either suffering from dengue or some other infection, which may not be as dangerous otherwise,” he said, adding that an individual’s role was more important as the mosquitoes spreading dengue bred in homes and reservoirs of clean drinking water.

Discouraged: Dr Akram said that administering anti-viral drugs in case of dengue fever was discouraged by experts, and patients should mostly depend on keeping themselves hydrated by drinking water and juices and rest through the natural cycle of the disease, which usually lasts a week. He said that a person who has already suffered an attack of dengue fever should take all necessary precautions to avoid a second attack as the disease could turn into the deadly dengue hemorrhagic fever.

Public hospital: Sir Ganga Ram Hospital Medical Superintendent (MS) Dr Ijaz Shaikh said that it was very easy to confuse malaria with dengue and other kinds of fevers, adding that quacks gave every patient with a fever the same drugs, which could be hazardous. He said that if a patient is suffering from a high fever, which is uncontrollable, they should visit public hospitals directly, adding that it took doctors longer to stabilise the condition of a patient if they had been experimented on by a quack.

Quacks: Jinnah Hospital MS Dr Zahid Pervaiz said that the hospital had set up a ward to treat patients of dengue fever who visited the hospital, where they were given glucose, ringers and other treatment. He said that numerous patients visited the hospital in critical condition because of the experimentation with quacks and traditional medical practitioners, who had already given them two or three different drugs with the view that at least one of them would work. He stressed that it was necessary to take tests and confirm a diagnosis before starting a patient on any kind of medication.

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