You may have upturned your garden buckets, checked the gutters and, generally ensured your house is ‘all clear’ as far as the dengue threat is concerned, but are your children safe from the deadly mosquito in school?
As over four million children in more than ten thousand secondary schools begin their third term this week, parents are all too aware of the risks of mosquito breeding in the large, crowded and cluttered compounds of schools. There is good reason for concern.
As places of children’s group learning and character formation, schools are necessarily crowded and cluttered. What is essential is that these places of day-long use by, often, very large groups of children are especially targeted for extreme vetting against this deadly epidemic.
The Ministry of Health has done well in coordinating with the Education authorities to implement a dengue mosquito prevention campaign in schools throughout the country as school term begins. With children being a large proportion of dengue victims, there cannot be any lethargy, inefficiency or cutting of corners in this exercise.
The combination of population growth, rapid and poorly managed urbanisation and, the radically worsening rainfall pattern due to global warming has contributed to the current crisis over dengue in this country. Over and above the above-mentioned three causal factors, this country’s political class from top to bottom as well as those corrupt elements in the bureaucracy must also take responsibility for this health catastrophe.
To their credit, this country’s medical professionals and public healthcare workers have been consistent in research – covering both curative and preventive measures –as well as in their untiring efforts in prevention and cure over recent decades as the dengue disease raised its head.
These unsung heroes, however, are only responding to the emergence of the disease due to the failure in overall management by the country’s political class along with those elements in the general administration susceptible to bribery and ‘undue influence’.
The political class at the lowest rungs, namely, of local government, along with those corrupt elements in the local bureaucracy, have, over decades failed in two things. They have, firstly, failed to pursue the time honoured practice of systematic, long term town and country planning and, secondly, been happy to overlook compliance with land management and construction regulations and standards for the benefit of bribe-givers and political clients.
And, also accountable for this mess are all those citizens who indulged in such bribery and undue influence in order to get their private landfills done, irregular house and building plans passed and, urban and country zoning laws bent to accommodate their businesses – including (ironically) some private school enterprises.
Add up several decades of such gross mismanagement and maladministration islandwide together with population growth and, sudden and massive rainfall, we have the perfect deadly mix for dengue. If local governance has failed, successive national governments have also failed. Theirs’ is the failure to enforce regulatory standards at local authority level and, to formulate, update and enforce countrywide land management and other development plans and policies. All this would have avoided or, at least, reduced, the conditions that are now pervasive in nurturing the disease.
Thus, we now draw world attention to the incidence and deadly impact of this disease.
The Epidemiology Unit of the Ministry of Health, one of the expert groups in the ‘frontline’ of the war again Dengue, reports that, during the past 8 months, 146,710 suspected dengue cases have been reported from all over the island. Some 300 people have died as victims.
Some 44% of dengue cases were reported from the Western Province alone – pointing to the link of the disease to urbanization and population growth. The emergence of dengue was originally associated with the Colombo region – being the country’s sole large urban concentration. But, today, the disease is island wide, with all those new areas of urban concentration in different parts of the country being host to new centres of the epidemic.
According to the Epidemiology Unit, the number of dengue cases peaked this year as the seasonal South West Monsoon rain dumped historically enormous quantities of rainfall throughout the island. The failures in land and water management resulted in the failure to manage this massive weather onslaught.
At the same time, the record heavy rainfall as well as the increasingly erratic and unseasonal cycle of drought and storms is also evidence of looming climate change.
“This situation warrants regular removal of possible mosquito breeding sites from the environment. It is also important to seek medical attention in the event of fever by day three of the illness,” advises the Epidemiology Unit in its website; caring advice, no doubt, by our medical professionals.
We hope that parents lend their support to their children’s schools in the endeavour to prevent dengue in schools.
The bigger call goes out to the administrators and political decision-makers to also respond with imagination, vigour and integrity to this challenge of Nature as well as of corrupt humanity.