Prevention was key to defeat dengue, stressed not only the panel but also the health experts dna spoke to. Delhi's problems also lay in shoddy implementation that defeated any amount of path breaking research.
India’s top health experts collectively scolded the city of Delhi for not being proactive enough in helping stop the spread of dengue. Drawing comparisons with a metro such as Bombay, they pointed out glaring gaps in Delhi’s implementation of preventive measures and the non-cooperative residents of the city.
Dr. AC Dhariwal, chairman of the National Vector Borne Disease Control Programme, Dr. MC Mishra, Director of AIIMS, Dr. Ashutosh Biswas, PRofessor of Medicine AIIMS, and others, spoke at a public lecture organised by the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, on Wednesday, to disseminate crucial information, and common sense, amidst the panic caused by dengue. They drove home the point that government and medical bodies could do nothing without community participation and civic sense. Delhi, hyper endemic to dengue, was unfavourably compared to Bombay where simple things made a difference; water connections are not given until a ladder is provided along with the overhead tanks for routine checking and cleaning, construction sites where the aedes mosquito easily breeds are monitored far more closely, roadside vehicle repair shops are not allowed to display empty tires, only tubes that have air in them.
Dr. Dhariwal said at the AIIMS’ panel on Wednesday that India suffered from dengue along with Latin America and parts of Asia. However, as Dr. BN Nagpal, scientist with the National Institute of Malaria Research, pointed out to dna in a previous conversation, in research and prevention India is far behind the similarly affected Singapore, Thailand, Indonesia. Lesser research, a late start, a lack of proper implementation and a crucial shortage of specialists has hit India's health programmes hard. Other Southeast Asian countries sailed ahead in preventive research, with money pumped into the science and smaller controllable populations that were cooperative. "For example, Indonesia has tapped into its population of housewives to thoroughly check breeding sites at home, preventing the spread of the aedes mosquito," Nagpal said. "Here, people won't let you inside the house for fogging." India's research, he said only really took off after the 2006 all-India dengue outbreak.
Speaking to dna separately, Dr. Sujata Sunil, research scientist with the Indian council for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology, said that there were two kinds of research for vector borne diseases. One was research for the sake of research, the hard science of looking into the disease and the vector; where India matched all global standards. It was the second kind, that could lead to new products or control/preventive measures where the country was lacking.
Prevention was key to defeat dengue, stressed not only the panel but also the health experts dna spoke to. Delhi's problems also lay in shoddy implementation that defeated any amount of path breaking research. Every speaker at AIIMS repeated the fact that fogging needs to be done inside houses where the mosquito breeds and takes shelter, one mosquito has 5-6 breeding sites, it never lays eggs on the surface of the water, but in the rim of the container, an infected mosquito breeds infected larvae.
“Fogging can’t be done all the time,” added Dr. Dhariwal. “Else the mosquito will grow resistant to it and we’ll lose our weapon.”
A worrying factor however, was the decreasing number of entomologists, specialists who study insects. "Without an entomologists, we cannot know the mosquito's types, its breeding patterns, when it comes out to bite. How are we then supposed to take preventive measures?" said Nagpal. According to him, despite the health ministry's recruitment drives, students now chose to specialise in more lucrative fields that lead to jobs in private firms, such as biotechnology.
"We did an experiment from 2010-2012, " said Nagpal. "In 20 localities in west Delhi, we eliminated breeding sites all year round. When the rains came there were no mosquitoes to spread to other spots. Till this dates, those sites are clean. It is possible to contains dengue, but the community has to cooperate. Prevention and community involvement can only go hand in hand."
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