Dengue control activities to be made compulsory for all state institutions

Nadira Gunatilleke

The Health Ministry and the Public Administration and Home Affairs Ministry will issue a joint circular soon making it compulsory for all state institutions to implement dengue control activities every Friday. A Cabinet paper will be presented shortly in connection with this, a Health Ministry spokesman said.

According to the spokesman, a special discussion was held in connection with this yesterday.

The highest number of dengue cases and have been reported from the Western Province, mainly from the Colombo and Gampaha districts where a large number of state institutions and schools are located.

The number of dengue patients in the country can be cut down by 50 per cent if the number of dengue cases in the Colombo district can be reduced by 50 per cent.

"Earlier, it was reported that only 10 per cent of the existing state institutions, such as, ministries, corporations, departments, authorities etc had set up dengue control committees following the circular issued by the Secretary to the President Lalith Weeratunga. The rest of the state institutions had failed to respond to the circular. The list of such institutions was handed over to President Mahinda Rajapaksa during a Cabinet meeting by Minister Sirisena, about a month ago," he said.

"Arrangements have also been made to allocate a specific time period to clean schools to protect school children from dengue.

The daily cleaning process will take place at all schools next week and a weekly cleaning process will take place thereafter. Under the new rules and regulations, it is compulsory to keep a radius of 150 metres from the school clean to ensure the safety of school children.

Over 35 per cent of dengue patients in the Colombo and Gampaha districts are school children," he added.