Need for preventive healthcare

While the Health authorities are at full throttle trying to control the outbreak of Dengue comes the news of equally life threatening epidemics in the form of rat fever and rabies which are sweeping many parts of the country. Already Dengue has claimed the lives of 110 people mostly children during the past 5 five months while the number of deaths as a result of rat fever and rabies have been 51 and 55 respectively, according our front page news report yesterday.

Therefore now the Health authorities are forced to fight three deadly epidemics at one and the same time. But did it have to be so in the first place? If only adequate preventive measures had been taken at the outset the Health Ministry would have been spared all the trouble and the lengths it is now forced to go to prevent the spread of dengue, not to mention the brickbats hurled at the Minister, sometimes unfairly.

But the public anger is only to be expected in the wake of the failure by all concerned agencies to prevent the outbreak of dengue to such a degree as the country is experiencing at present despite past the experiences in this respect.

And like in the past what we are seeing today is a typical knee jerk reaction to the challenge with all and sundry out in a frenzy to clean up Dengue breeding locales and environments. Dengue had been in out midst for sometime and the there was ample time to put in place all preventive measures well before hand. The other day Health Minister Nimal Siripala de Silva reacting to the blame heaped on him by the media over the slowness of his Ministry to respond to the Dengue threat said unlike with most other epidemics there was no anti-dengue vaccine or any known immunisation against dengue.

But certainly there are preventive measures that should have been put in place on time learning from past experience. After all it is well known that the outbreak of Dengue each year coincides with the onset of the monsoon. Why couldn't the public be warned in advance to maintain sanitary environments in their surroundings instead of waiting till the last moment or worse, when the epidemic had already spread. Needless to say much lives would have been saved had the public been forewarned.

It is pity that Sri Lanka which boasts of one of the best Healthcare systems in Asia is singularly found wanting in the area of preventive health. If not how can there be such a large number of casualties in the latest Dengue outbreak.

Of course the blame cannot be placed squarely on the Minister alone. The local Government authorities who are in the forefront of the anti-dengue drive every year too should have geared themselves up to the impending threat well beforehand. One does not recall reading anywhere in the newspapers of any offender being prosecuted for 'mosquito breeding' in their premises. The local Government authorities have now woken from their slumber and is mighty busy trying to get tough with those allowing for mosquito breeding surroundings. Why was no action taken at the very outset one may ask.

Now the problem is compounded with the outbreak of rat fever and rabies. Haven't we had previous instances to learn from? It is the duty of the local authorities to carry out sterilisation of stray dogs. But is this been done? What is the purpose of having so many local bodies in the country if they are not performing their duty by the rate payers? Ditto for the Provincial Councils which is being maintained at enormous cost of tax payers' money. With a plethora of local bodies all major cities are still stinking from garbage which is ready source of disease and pestilence.

It is time the Government took a serious view of the role of these local bodies. Vital functions such as disease prevention are too serious a function to be left in the hands of these institutions known for their inefficiency and corruption. Now that the three decades long conflict is behind us the Government can afford to shift focus to those areas in the country's administrative machinery that had been malfunctioning all these years and outstanding projects vital to the public welfare.