THE High Court is yet to deliver any order over the “partial negligence” of Dhaka city corporations regarding last year’s dengue outbreak in the capital, although a judicial inquiry report on the issue was submitted to the court two months back. According to Directorate General of Health Services, 101,354 dengue cases were reported last year, of which 49,544 were outside Dhaka. The number of deaths was 156.
During the hearing of a suo moto rule, the HC Bench of Justice Tariq ul Hakim and Justice Md Iqbal Kabir Lytton on November 12 last year formed the probe committee led by Dhaka District Judge Md Helal Chowdhury to look into them issue of negligence to identify for the outbreak of mosquito-borne diseases like dengue fever and chikungunya in Dhaka. The committee has found partial negligence of the authorities of Dhaka north and south city corporations over the dengue outbreak last year, said sources at Attorney General’s office.
It should not take a High Court order to figure out that both of our City Corporations have been grossly negligent in taking care that mosquitoes dont proliferate. The key approach to mitigating dengue transmission is to control the Aedes population, and this often involves vector control strategies such as larval source reduction and preventive surveillance that are labour-intensive and require effective deployment of valuable resources.
Poor water, sanitation, and hygiene systems, alongside a dense population, are prolonging the outbreak in Bangladesh. To prevent outbreak progression, short-term nationwide actions by government officials, non-governmental organisations, policy makers, and institutions must be initiated. Key mosquito breeding areas should be destroyed and sprayed with insecticides. Measures to address waterlogging and cleaning of canals, water tanks, rainwater collection tanks, sump pits, downpipes, and gutters should be put in place.
Long-term sustainable control of dengue virus is essential to manage future outbreaks. Actions that could be taken include nationwide event-based dengue surveillance with environmental management; research on ecological, environmental, and entomological indicators of infection; development of geospatial and risk mapping for scoping vulnerable zones. Our City Corporations are yet to tackle the measures outlined above due to institutional inertia. A court order may change that.
Our analysis is responsibility of mismanagement should be treated at the highest level. In this the Mayors have to bear the main responsibility for the negligence of lower level subordinates.
