News
Intensify war against dengue mosquito as it also carries Zika virus
Reports that Zika virus which causes microcephaly in newborns is spreading among Brazilians is a cause for alarm for most of the tropical countries such as ours
The virus is thought to have travelled from Cape Werde in the Atlantic Ocean to Brazil and now it is expected to affect all Latin America countries. Although it passes off as normal viral fever with a rash and sore eyes as the main symptoms, pregnant women must take care as the virus attacks the unborn babies and cause damage to their brains.
Should Sri Lanka be worried? Yes. The same mosquito that spreads dengue fever, the Aedes aegypti, is the carrier of this virus too. The same mosquito spread chikungunya in Sri Lanka in 2005 with devastating results. The virus hit several Indian Ocean islands, including India before coming to Sri Lanka.
The same mosquito also spreads Yellow Fever which is prevalent in the Sub-Saharan Africa and some Latin American countries.
Sri Lanka has been spared of a Yello Fever epidemic because all travellers coming from that region or going to that must have vaccination against it.
True we have nothing much of a communication with Brazil or other Latin American countries with regard to tourism or trade.
Therefore, we may not panic. However, dengue fever came to Colombo in 1965 and within 50 years it has spread all over the country. But it was confined to Colombo and suburbs until around 1995. It was only during the past 20 years it spread its wings. Last year heavy downpours helped to wash away the Aedes mosquito eggs and also destroy the mosquitoes.
However, when the rains started to subside the mosquitoes came back with vengeance infecting large numbers of people.
This trend is increasing at the moment with Colombo city reporting a gradual increase from November last year and in every month since then more than 300 patients had been reported, according the Epidemiology Unit’s website.
Unfortunately, only ad hoc measures are taken for mosquito control now and all routine fogging and inspection programmes are stopped. Using the personnel from the police or army may help in the short term but the local authorities must take action to place officials permanently in-charge of areas to inspect all premises in search of breeding places along with volunteers so that weekly the whole city gets covered.
The idea should be not to punish the people but to get them to clear breeding areas. The CMC has enough vacancies for Health Instructors as the remnants of those recruited on the instructions of the Late President R. Premadasa will retire soon. They were the backbone of the dengue control programme in the past. They had their own areas for which they were responsible.
There is no need to request the Provincial Authorities to recruit them as CMC has the power to employ them.
I cannot understand why the previous Commissioner overlooked this possibility. Unless we go back to tested ways of controlling dengue outbreaks soon we will have several diseases circulating in the city.