Dengue on the double, 50,500 cases and counting

Sri Lanka’s health sector administrators and municipal officials are entering a new year with a record of failure. Dengue cases this past year nearly doubled to 50,519 compared with 2015 when 29,777 became statistics in the dengue epidemic.

Thousands of children are among the dengue patients and the island’s largest children’s hospital admitted 70 patients every day this year.

Every 24 hours this past year, 136 Sri Lankans became dengue patients - that is more than five every hour.

In eight high risk districts, Colombo, Gampaha, Kandy, Kalutara, Jaffna, Moneragala, Kurunegala, and Killinochchi, the number of dengue patients exceeded 36,400 in the past year. Colombo reported 15,421 cases, wh i l e Gampaha had 6,263 patients. In Kalutara there were 3,303 and 3,901 in Kandy. In Kilinochchi there were 2,227 patients. Kurunegala reported 2,415, while Moneragala had 2,969 patients.

The extent of the damage that the dengue mosquito is causing is reflected at Lady Ridgeway Children's.

“As of May 31, 2016 there have been 1,340 dengue cases, out of which 211 were dengue haemorrhagic cases. In 2015, the hospital admitted 2,561 dengue patients. There’s a definite rise,” said Lady Ridgeway Children's Hospital Director Dr. W. K. Wickramasinghe. “We have around 70 cases of dengue every day. And we have six special wards where dengue patients are treated. All these wards have special units called ‘Dengue High Dependency Units’ where children who are critical receive treatment. So the management has improved drastically.’’

While the dengue cases continue to rise, all that the Colombo municipal health officials could claim is that they have sprayed insecticide covering 80 per cent of the council area.

CMC Chief Medical Officer of Health, Dr. Ruwan Wijeyamuni, called on residents to form small groups to help identify mosquito breeding grounds and to destroy them through a volunteer campaign once a month.

A source at CMC said that persuading the public rather than the threat of fines would help get the message of prevention across