National Dengue Week Sept. 18-25

COLOMBO: Globally at least 100 countries are endemic for dengue. Currently about 40% of the world population, i.e. 2.5 billion people are at risk. As per estimates, over 50 million infections with about 400,000 cases of Dengue Haemorrhagic Fever (DHF) are reported every year - approximately one DHF case every minute.

At least 21,000 deaths from DHF occur every year, mostly among children - equivalent to one life lost to DHF almost every 20 minutes. In the South East Asia (SEA) region 52% population, i.e. 1.3 billion are at risk of DF. This was disclosed by Dr. S. Poori WHO Colombo Office, addressing a media conference in Colombo on Wednesday.

The media conference was organised by the Health Education Bureau to announce the National Dengue Week from September 18-25, in the country.

When we analyze the reasons for dengue emerging as a major global health problem, it becomes obvious that we will have to introduce more inter-sectoral actions into the dengue prevention and control programmes.

For the time being, the only methods for preventing and controlling dengue are to ensure prompt diagnosis of cases of fever and appropriate clinical management, to reduce human-vector contact, and to control larval habitats mainly in and around people’s homes, schools, workplaces.

A range of Aedes control methods, the mosquito species which transmit dengue virus, now exist, many of which have already been tried and proven for different situations.

The major obstacle to effective implementation of selective and integrated mosquito control has been the inability of relevant authorities to mobilize and coordinate the resources needed to achieve and sustain behavioural impact among the populations at risk of dengue.

Unfortunately, people do not change behaviour all of a sudden and remain “changed” from that moment onwards. Rather, people move through subtle stages: from becoming aware to becoming informed, becoming convinced, deciding to take action, taking action, repeating that action, and finally maintaining that action.

Most programmes usually manage to inform and convince, but often fail to provide an effective and feasible new behaviour, or to prompt people to take the necessary steps towards adopting and maintaining the new behaviour.

The untiring efforts of all the stakeholders to promote the desired behaviour for control of dengue transmitting mosquitoes have to be sustained. We all know that this is not an easy task; rather it needs strong political commitment, adequate resources and well-planned and researched social mobilization and communication strategies most of which are existing in Sri Lanka.

To keep in line with this, the National COMBI plan (Communication for behavioral Impact) for Dengue control has been implemented with the support of the stakeholders since early this year, and the 2nd consecutive dengue week is organised to combat the impeding outbreak of dengue during September-November period, with the experiences we gained during the 1st dengue week which was organised earlier in April this year.

We would like to commend the well coordinated dengue control activities carried out by the Ministry of Health with the assistance of the stakeholders and assure the very best of our support/WHO support in all your endeavours to combat the disease.