Govt failed to control dengue for wrong measures: Experts

Reza Mahmud :
Dengue fatalities and cases are on surge alarmingly making all efforts of the government fail while the experts alleged that the authorities failed to contain the mosquito borne disease due to its wrong measures in this regards.

Public health experts said, the city corporations have not worked yearlong to contain mosquitoes as a result they have grasped to curb the menace when it starts spreading alarmingly.

Their efforts of containing dengue spreading also not in scientific ways, the experts said.

They also said that the city corporations used to ‘organise showdowns’ before the media rather than taking effective steps.

Public health experts said the Aedes mosquito borne dengue and chikungunya hit the country since 2000.

But after more than 22 years the government failed to establish an entomology laboratory and to conduct any research to find out ways that how to eliminate the Aedes mosquito.

They also blamed the government failure on involving people on campaign of eliminating the dengue threat.

When contacted, Professor Dr. M. Muzaherul Huq, former Adviser of World Health Organisation (WHO) told The New Nation, “Government failed to make people involved in the huge campaign to erase the dengue threat from the country.”

He said, when the dengue claims huge lives of the countrymen as a national threat, the people is obviously eager to join the efforts of eliminating this danger.

But the government widely failed to take the people in the efforts while it would not be easy to the government or its agencies to erase the threat.

Public Health Expert Dr. Lenin Chowdhury told The New Nation on Monday, “The government has not taken efforts as per scientific way to combat with dengue spreading.”

“There is certain scientific ways that how to combat with Aedes mosquitoes.

There are ways in chemical and environmental ways to contain the mosquitoes, but government has to conduct research for this. But they yet to do that,” Dr. Lenin Chowdhury said.

The public health experts suggested establishing entomology laboratories is a must in the country for conducting researches in these fields.

The experts said the concern authorities only show their busyness to combat mosquitoes in the rainy season to spend huge money but the fruitful nothing has been happened.

However, Dhaka South City Corporation (DSCC) has allocated about Tk47 crore for mosquito control in the fiscal year 2023-24, in a bid to protect residents from mosquito-borne diseases.

Meanwhile, in the revised budget for the previous fiscal year 2022-23, DSCC had allocated Tk30. 75 crore for mosquito control. Actual expenditures amounted to Tk31.

The Dhaka North City Corporation (DNCC) allocated Tk122.84cr to fight the dengue menace in the FY 2023-24 which is 64pc more than the last fiscal. It has spent Tk 101 crore in the previous FY to control mosquitoes.

Public health experts said the vector-borne disease hit Dhaka city in 2000 subsequently the dengue positive cases were detected in Dhaka city only.

But the dengue disease is changing its nature and it is gradually spreading across the country, they said. All 64 districts of the country have witnessed positive dengue cases now, they added.

Meanwhile, a total of 19 dengue patients died and 3,033 were admitted to different hospitals in the country during the last 24 hours till Monday morning, the Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS) said it in a press release.

It said the authorities recorded 928 dengue deaths between January 1 and September 25 this year.

During the period, 801 dengue patients were hospitalised in Dhaka city while 2,232 were admitted to different hospitals outside it.

With the new cases, the total number of patients rose to 1,90,758, the statement said.

Besides, about 1,79,683 patients were released from different hospitals out of the total patients.