Mosquitoes in hospitals

Lankan doctors found eggs in flower pots, outside the office of the medical superintendant at the Ganga Ram Hospital.

Some things require not expert advice but simple, common sense. It should not have taken a team of dengue specialists called in from Sri Lanka to point out that the presence of any dengue mosquitoes and eggs at a major public hospital in Lahore was not such a good idea at all. The team of Lankan doctors found eggs and pests in flower pots, lying outside the office of the medical superintendant at the Ganga Ram Hospital in Lahore. The good doctor running the affairs of one of the biggest government health facilities in the dengue-infested city had apparently not read the newspaper ads, banners, posters and televised advice warning against the danger of mosquitoes breeding in water that collects in flower pots and other similar vessels.

The Sri Lankan team led by Dr Hassitha Tisserra, also made another very pertinent point. Dr Tisserra stated that such negligence, if discovered in his own country, would have led to immediate action against the concerned authorities. This, as we all know, is unlikely to happen here. Accountability is not a part of our culture and certainly not practiced against officials who hold key offices. This of course is one reason why we find ourselves in the situation we face today, with the Punjab government having totally failed to either ward off dengue or calm the public panic, which has multiplied rapidly. As the Sri Lankan team has stressed, this is totally unnecessary — given that dengue is 100 per cent curable. The government needs to do more to create calm and also to improve conditions at government hospitals, where up to three patients lie squashed onto a single bed.

The Sri Lankan team has also said it took nearly three decades of effort in their country to bring dengue under control. That kind of effort needs to begin immediately. We need to replicate the tactics used by other nations and prove we too have the capacity to get rid of a disease which has continued to spread. So far there is little evidence we are going about this in any kind of systematic manner.

Published in The Express Tribune, September 19^th,  2011.