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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | Failed, again

Failed, again

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published Published on Nov 8, 2012   modified Modified on Nov 8, 2012
-The Indian Express

Why is a phenomenon as routine as dengue allowed to take the government unawares?

Every year, dengue arrives with the dramatic intensity of a crime wave. The government’s health apparatus is always amazed and baffled, but claims to be fighting back with everything at its disposal. And it keeps fighting and losing until the weather changes again, the vector of the disease dwindles and nature takes away what it had brought. And therein lies the secret of the government’s failure to contain the disease. Dengue can only be treated symptomatically, and outbreaks can only be contained by reducing the vector population. Vector control in advance of the season, together with early reporting and treatment of cases, is the only credible containment strategy, but the preventive health apparatus always reacts to outbreaks. If it acted ahead of the wave, it would be impossible for the disease to leave behind a trail of mortality and serious morbidity every year.

Delhi has reported around 1,200 cases of infection this year. The official death toll stands at nine in Kolkata, and at 38 in Maharashtra. Figures are contested everywhere, since the immunological tests for dengue can be variously interpreted. Meanwhile, there is speculation that the dengue wave is being prolonged by humidity from the Nilam storm. But what use is a post-mortem that will be forgotten next year? As always, health departments have deployed fogging devices too late. Too much time is always lost in bickering over jurisdiction and budgetary allocations. Diagnostic kits are not distributed in good time and are not always available when they are needed. The identification of the year’s ruling viral strains takes too long. Referral to properly equipped hospitals does not always follow protocol, resulting in needless deaths. Malaria control, once a flagship government project, which could also have ended the dengue menace, remains under dust covers.

Every year, India follows the same script to ritually re-enact this avoidable tragedy. Twelve months from now, the country will again be taken unawares by dengue, as it has been since the late 1960s.

The Indian Express, 8 November, 2012, http://www.indianexpress.com/news/failed-again/1028316/0


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