Mosquito menace

The standing floodwaters will aid the mosquito in creating its havoc.

It is astonishing how much terror the tiny mosquito can cause. This time, the fear of dengue is even more heightened than has been the case in previous years. Indeed, the situation in Punjab seems to be quite out of control, bringing wave upon wave for the provincial government. The number of dengue cases stands at over 2,000, with additions being made each day. There has been at least one death, but the fact is we do not know whether there may have been more casualties outside urban centres with the illness having gone undiagnosed in rural areas with poor health facilities.

The degree of panic now being seen has led to morning assembly being cancelled at schools in the province and banners going up all over the city of Lahore urging people to clean out rooftops, gardens and drain standing water. A fumigation campaign is also on. But this amounts to too little, too late. The question on every set of lips is why action was not taken to spray mosquito-breeding areas and destroy the insect before it could buzz into the lives of so many people, affectively disrupting them. It’s not as if this is the first time that the country has seen a near-epidemic of sorts of this dreaded disease, but we have shown that we never learn from our errors.

Punjab is not the only province affected. There have been, at least, three deaths in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, while in Sindh 190 cases of hospitalisation have been reported. The actual number of dengue patients may be considerably higher and the standing floodwaters will only aid the mosquito in creating its havoc, something that will not go away any time soon because of the ongoing monsoons. It seems obvious that we need to do much more to keep dengue in control, knowing that it is an annual visitor. We wonder why measures were not taken previously to prevent the sense of public trauma we are seeing now, with hospitals overwhelmed by cases and people too scared to step outdoors in the evenings. The neglect is inexcusable. Meetings continue to be held as to what is to be done. But we need to know why this was not done sooner. At the very least, those responsible should be held accountable.

Published in The Express Tribune, September 12^th,  2011.