Dengue - rising thirtyfold

In the wake of a recent study conducted by the Aga Khan University, another entirely preventable public health crisis has joined the ranks of similar preventable diseases taking over Pakistan. According to the report, there has been a staggering 3,000 per cent increase in dengue cases across the country in a single decade - surging from approximately 100,000 in 2012 to an estimated 3.28 million by 2022.

What once used to be a periodic threat owing to the monsoon season has now become a year-round epidemic. All the credit for this extreme setback in disease control goes to a collapsing, impaired and rarely-attended-to waste management and hygiene control system. What's more, every time authorities are questioned on why vectors are breeding unchecked, they release vague statements about the failure of every other institution but theirs.

Sindh, unsurprisingly, carries the heaviest load, with Karachi East reporting the highest estimated incidence. When an entire province is gradually turned into an active wasteland without clean water, functioning sanitation systems, proper garbage dumps and even basic social etiquette on waste disposal, such incidents are bound to occur. Ostensibly, provincial health departments and local municipalities have launched countless anti-dengue campaigns and task forces over the past decade, yet the crisis remains largely unaffected by these flimsy attempts. Dengue breeds in exactly those places that our cities have chosen to ignore.

Officials will continue to point to funding shortfalls, overlapping jurisdictions and systemic issues but this finger-pointing will not fix a very fundamental problem of this country. It goes without saying that elected representatives must ensure basic sanitation for every citizen, regardless of where they live or how much money they can pay for cleaning services. Waste management must be treated as the frontline of public health, before dengue goes on posing a fatal threat to this country's people.