Dengue strikes again

Season by season, Pakistan limps from one public health crisis to another. Seemingly without pause, our country is plagued by health issues of every imaginable type, while low awareness levels and a lack of civic responsibility hinder efforts in combating various diseases. With public health services existing at unacceptable levels – mostly in developed urban areas - they remain persistently underfunded, badly administered and unacceptably poor in providing healthcare to a broad spectrum of the populace with a low disease threshold. Every year, hands are held up in disgust as new afflictions strike dead countless people. One of the usual suspects currently at play – dengue virus – with a perennial lack of preparedness evident.

Eight new cases of dengue were confirmed in Rawalpindi on October 17, bringing the total to 297 this year, while the first case from Shangla was also reported.

The difference in both response and severity to disease outbreak in urban and rural areas is striking. Despite paucity of resources, the district administration in the Shahdara area of Baubzai tehsil, which reported its first case of dengue fever in June this year, quickly acted to avert a worst-case scenario with an intensive awareness drive and fumigation at all possible breeding grounds to curb the spread of dengue virus. While in Raiwind, health officials bemoaned public hygiene and disregard to keep water stored in containers covered.

At the civic level, local administrations are negligent in dealing with solid waste, data collection on the incidence of dengue is poor and there is dearth of appropriately trained healthcare and civic workers to control the spread of disease.

This is a vicious circle that is compounded by incompetence. Mitigating the effects of dengue is no rocket science and we have the technical competencies, at the very least, limit its annual impact. It is this bad because it is allowed to be.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 20^th, 2014.

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