ISLAMABAD:Federal Minister for Climate Change Senator Sherry Rehman on Sunday said the bush fires rekindled in the Margallas at the boundary area of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) and Islamabad due to hot high speed winds which was controlled in the morning.

The minister for climate change in a tweet said that fire fighting were going on since morning to control the fire on Margalla Hills in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Islamabad boundary area. She wrote, “Bush fires near E-11 and D-12 area at the boundary of ICT/KP are being fought by CDA & KP staff since morning.”

She said after that fire was controlled it has erupted again at 3 pm. Sherry said due to hot high speed winds and tough terrain there were 70 fire fighters deployed still but the Capital Development Authority (CDA) might need to deploy more.

Director General Environment CDA Irfan Niazi told reporter  that the CDA was on the ground since morning to put out the fire but hot fast moving wind and difficult terrain was making the operations harder.

Chairperson of Islamabad Wildlife Management Board (IWMB) Rina Saeed Khan informed that the high winds changed the direction of the fire that caught sector D-12 and E-11 area of the National Park.

ISLAMABAD:Due to the effective response of the government on the direction of Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, the health officials remained successful in controlling the Cholera epidemic in Pir Koh, Dera Bugti.

The government immediately responded to the situation by scaling up interventions and mobilizing resources to the affected area and after the complete recovery of 3,615 patients from Cholera now the under-treatment patients in the hospital were only three.

It is pertinent to mention here that on receiving reports of an increasing number of Cholera cases in Dera Bugti, the Prime Minister immediately issued special directions to control the situation by using all resources.

On which, the provincial government of Balochistan had submitted a final report to the Prime Minister on the situation and special measures taken on PM’s direction to control the situation.

As per the report, the provincial government on the direction of the PM, earlier stopped the contaminated water of natural spring which was the main cause of the pandemic while later opening it to use for other purposes after chlorination.

Similarly, the provincial government immediately released funds for the supply of medicines to the affected area. Two medical camps were also established at Pir Koh on an emergency basis besides converting the Basic Health Unit of Pir Koh into a 20-bed hospital alongwith the deployment of 24 doctors and 32 paramedical staff from Quetta.

The government had also set up laboratories in Pir Koh and Dera Bugti while mobile teams had been given the task to reach every house for creating awareness while ensuring the presence of local administration. Social mobilizers were visiting house to house and agencies had dispatched broachers, leaflets, and banners.

Besides direct monitoring of operation by the minister for Narcotics Control Nawabzada Shahzain Bugti, Chief Secretary Balochistan, Secretary Health Balochistan, and other health officials, the Country Representative, World Health Organization (WHO), Dr. Palitha Mahipala also visited the affected area and assured full support to beef up response to the epidemic.

In order to ensure the provision of clean drinking water, an amount of Rs 10 million had been released while National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) had provided water tanks to store 4000 gallons of clean drinking water.

The affected persons had been provided free medical treatment alongwith clean drinking water and food items.

In order to control the epidemic, the WHO had provided ambulances, medicines, and a 12-bed hospital while the government had prepared a long-term and short-term strategy to manage such epidemics in the future.

ISLAMABAD:Patients prescribed antibiotics in hospitals to prevent sepsis and other bacterial infections are at increased risk of developing a life-threatening fungal infection called candidiasis because of disruption to the immune system in the gut, a new study warned.

Gut microbiomes are generally known to carry genetically encoded strategies to survive contact with antibiotics.

But the study, led by researchers from the University of Birmingham in the UK and the US National Institutes of Health, discovered that antibiotics disrupt the immune system in the intestines, meaning that fungal infections become poorly controlled in that area.

The team also found that where fungal infections developed, gut bacteria were also able to escape, leading to the additional risk of bacterial infection, Medical Daily reported .

While the study, published in Cell Host and Microbe, demonstrated the potential for immune-boosting drugs, the researchers said their work also highlights how antibiotics can have additional effects on our bodies that affect how we fight infection and disease.

“We knew that antibiotics make fungal infections worse, but the discovery that bacterial co-infections can also develop through these interactions in the gut was surprising. These factors can add up to a complicated clinical situation – and by understanding these underlying causes, doctors will be better able to treat these patients effectively,” said lead author Dr Rebecca Drummond, fungal immunologist at Birmingham.

In the study, the team used mice treated with a broad-spectrum antibiotic cocktail and then infected these animals with Candida albicans, the most common fungus that causes invasive candidiasis in humans. They found that although infected mice had increased mortality, this was caused by infection in the intestine, rather than in the kidneys or other organs.

An estimated 1.2 million people worldwide died in 2019 from antibiotic-resistant infections, and this number is predicted to increase ten-fold by 2050.

The new “findings demonstrate the possible consequences of using antibiotics in patients who are at risk of developing fungal infections,” said Dr. Drummond. “If we limit or change how we prescribe antibiotics we can help reduce the number of people who become very ill from these additional infections – as well as tackling the huge and growing problem of antibiotic resistance.”