Dengue Tests.

There seems to be a dengue emergency on the horizon as cases are increasing rapidly across the country. The Federal Climate Change Minister Sherry Rehman has revealed that there has been at least a 50 percent increase in the incidence of dengue all across the country. The situation in Karachi however has been particularly severe as there have been around 3,300 cases of dengue in Karachi this year; of these 1,066 have been reported in September alone. Some experts estimate that the number of patients being treated for dengue symptoms on any given day in Karachi nowadays is in the thousands.

As has been witnessed several times in the past, opportunists are always around the corner to exploit such situations as reports of testing prices being jacked up significantly by hospitals and laboratories. The management of diseases such as malaria and dengue requires repeated tests which imposes a heavy financial burden on poor patients.

As per reports, rates for the dengue NS1 antigen were ranging from Rs 1,460 to Rs 3,000, around Rs 550 for a platelet count test, and Rs 1,300 for the ICT Malaria test. These prices are more than double what is...