A local daily yesterday reported that sporadic rain and a relatively empty capital will make an ideal breeding ground for the dengue-borne Aedes mosquitoes. Health officials of City Corporation apprehended that if people had not emptied the water containers lying around the household, covered the commodes and other places holding clear water before leaving for their villages, they are likely to return to an Aedes infested home. Meanwhile, Directorate General of Health Services sources said 1,269 people were treated at hospitals with dengue fever in Dhaka and 63 outside Dhaka since January. One thing is clear that – at this moment the authorities are not capable to pay attention to prevent the Aedes, when coronavirus has already turned into pandemic. If dengue hits the city people with full force, it will be impossible to tackle the situation by the health officials.
We don’t understand why the City Corporation authorities are doing late to launch drives, including adulticiding and larviciding, in the city areas. It is believed that the light rain a few days ago had helped the breeding of Aedes. The larvae are going to be adult mosquitoes within a fortnight. In an official estimation, at least 104 people died of dengue fever across Bangladesh last year. Unofficial sources said the number was around double. The dengue fever had taken an alarming turn at that time in Bangladesh with a total of 93,807 cases only from January 1 to October 21. The situation went to such an extent that the High Court had criticised the two city DCCs, as patients continued to get hospitalized because of largely ineffective mosquito insecticides. It had asked the City Corporations to submit a report to the court on how and where the staff were working, and a report on the number of dengue patients in the country.
We don’t want to see the recurrence of the dengue menace this year too. The authorities concerned must not waste time to take steps to save the people from this deadly communicable disease.
