Editorial

This time there was enough warning and enough time. Yet the civic bodies have been caught napping as the predictable recrudescence of the dengue outbreak actually occurred. Sixty people have been hospitalised in one month, according to a report published in yesterday’s The Independent. The report says this year dengue has broken out later than last year but the number of patients coming to the hospital for treatment is increasing. Citing the control room of the Directorate of Health Services the report says that of the 58 patients admitted into different hospitals recently, one died. The actual number of the afflicted must be higher, since the tally based on hospitals cannot be exhaustive. What is particularly disturbing is that the Aedes mosquito, the dreaded carrier of dengue fever, is breeding rapidly as rainwater collected in various breeding grounds in late monsoon while larvicide activities of the rapid action force deployed by the Dacca City Corporation are not visible.

After last year’s outbreak it was expected that foolproof measures, both preventive and curative, would be taken to eradicate the mosquito-borne disease, a new importation in the country. Although some preparation was made as regards medical facilities, municipal activities showed no sense of urgency, in Dhaka or other towns and cities. It is true that Aedes mosquito grows not in drains but in stagnant clean water stored in small and shallow containers and for this reason it rests with the residents to destroy the breeding grounds; but here too the DCC failed to take the leadership, to mount a public education programme and raise awareness. The Ward Commissioners were not mobilised, no massive movement was built up although it was not very difficult to establish contact with the 1.30,000 householders of Dhaka city individually, and instruct them about the imperatives. In fact even the media were used sparingly. In Malaysia dengue has been eradicated by all out civic and public education campaign and tough persuasion of every householder, backed by penalty. In the West Bengal state of neighbouring India, recently the law has been amended to make the householder accountable for any mosquito larvae found in her or his house. So long the disease has remained confined to urban areas. Once it spreads to villages, control will become far more difficult.