Dengue strikes again

Dengue fever pays a deadly visit ever year right across the country and it is expanding its range northwards as the rise in cases in the Swat valley demonstrated in the last three years. Sindh is the latest province to experience a spike in prevalence, with 248 cases in the last week alone, according to the Sindh Dengue Control Programme and 244 of those were in Karachi. There have been 1,630 cases reported since January this year and of those the vast majority were in the metropolis — 1,585. Early in September, it was Rawalpindi that was ringing the alarm bells with 81 cases reported by September 5. Punjab Health Secretary Jawad Rafique Malik went to Rawalpindi to monitor the situation, with Rawal Town remaining a ‘hotspot’ exactly as it was in 2014. All this concern and activity is replicated year on year, and though it is unlikely that dengue will ever be completely eradicated, it is possible to control it.

Control of dengue is not the public health equivalent of rocket science and the weapons of war to fight it are low-tech and easily available. Fumigation is widely used to clear the areas, where the mosquito that carries dengue breeds, but it is for the city, town and village administrations to take pre-emptive measures before the dengue season kicks in — generally between September and November. If administrations took more care to limit standing water — and there is no shortage of festering pits and building sites across the country, quite apart from naturally occurring water features — then the incidence of dengue could be reduced. Some administrations have indeed been proactive in this respect, but it needs consistency and interagency coordination — to say nothing of political will and an allocation of appropriate funding for the logistical side of the operation. All too often the equipment to spray is unattended and not serviced between dengue outbreaks, and money for petrol to run the vehicles is reportedly not available sometimes. The curse of dengue is a manageable public health issue — which can and should be managed better than it currently is.

Published in The Express Tribune, September 23^rd, 2015.

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