Skip to main content

Mosquitoes are Back!

Image
By
The only silver lining I could see to the recent dry hot spell was respite from the droning and stings of blood sucking mosquitoes. Now that the monsoons have finally arrived, mosquitoes and malaria cannot be far behind.
                These little “animals” can be deadly; 40 million people suffered from mosquito diseases last year in India of whom malaria comprised 2 million. Of 247 million people who suffered from this disease globally (2006 data), 8 lac died, 85% being children, amounting to 2000 children dying each day. The other diseases spread by mosquitoes include Dengue fever, encephalitis, Chickungunya, filariasis and yellow fever.The number is increasing due to deteriorating health systems, growing resistance to drugs and pesticides, and climate change.
                There are 2 tragic aspects to the story of malaria: first, most who succumb to the illness do so because of delay in treatment, and second, malaria is not difficult to prevent as most developed countries have shown.
                Research in Africa revealed that during outbreaks of malaria, lives were lost largely due to delay. It took few days for a febrile person to consult a doctor, go through blood tests for malaria, and then receive medications for the infection.By providing anti-malarials emperically through a network of paramedics, to anyone having fever, many lives could be saved. Our experience in India is similar: many who reach us in their terminal stages have often been febrile for several days, seeing several doctors, travelling many miles, but not getting a dose of anti-malarials. The test results often come in a few hours too late.Treatment delayed is treatment denied!!
                How can we prevent malaria?  The female Anophelese mosquito can fly only a few hundred meters, needs a drink of human blood ( during which it transmits the malaria germs) and lays its eggs in water. If stagnant water from flower pots, coolers, buckets etc are drained and kept clean in the house and vicinity, mosquitoes can’t breed. A major problem today is water collecting in polythene bags thrown on the roadside or stagnant drains choked with them. Local community groups can help clean these up. Periodic fogging with Malathion and pouring kerosene in stagnant ditches usually require some help from the government. Mosquito nets and repellents (coils, mats or creams) form our last but least effective defence. Concerted action aimed at keeping the locality clean is far more beneficial than individual protection.
                Mosquitoes have played their role in history.  They delayed the construction of the Suez and Panama canals by striking many workers with malaria and yellow fever, and brought many mighty people to their knees (Alexander the great, and recently the thespian Dilip Kumar). Wise rulers of the Mohenjodaro days ensured that water in the canals they built kept flowing, preventing mosquitoes from breeding, and the Gates Foundation has identified malaria as one of its 4 thrust areas for support.
                The rains have come. Can we prepare ourselves better than the mosquitoes this year?
     As published in HT City ( Hindustan Times) dated 19 july, 2009.    
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Teaching and Learning – is there a trick?

By
One of the big mistakes that we as parents and teachers often make, and that could stifle the mental development of our children, is to treat them as just small adults! In fact, it is this attitude of grown-ups that could be leading our next generation to become stereotyped conformists rather than original thinkers and innovators. And if we intend to drive home health messages and inculcate healthy habits we need to tailor our efforts to their cognitive potential. That children indeed think and discover the world differently was first noticed by a Swiss scientist Jean Piaget in the early 20th century. He studied his own three children grow and was intrigued by how they behaved, played games and learnt at different ages. With further observations and experiments, he propounded the theory of ‘cognitive development’, placed great importance on the education of children and is hailed even today, 30 years after his death, as a pioneer of the constructive theory of knowing.  He...
1 comment
Read more

The Doctor’s Dress

By
The familiar white coat worn by physicians as their distinctive dress for over 100 years, has started generating  murmurs  of controversy. It is not uncommon to find the blood pressure to be higher when measured by a white-coat-wearing-doctor in the hospital or clinic than the readings obtained at home by relatives.  This is due to the anxiety that the white coat and the hospital setting evokes in patients, and has been termed “White Coat Hypertension”. Mature clinicians often routinely subtract a few points from these measurements when entering records in case charts or calculating the dose of anti-hypertensive medications to be prescribed. The white coat scares children too.  Kids often express their dislike for this dress by crying and screaming and by denying access to their bellies or chest for examination by paediatricians in this attire. Many pediatricians across the world have folded up their white coats and taken to informal colourful dressing to...
2 comments
Read more

Questions from a Doctor’s Life

By
There is hardly any person in Uttar Pradesh who has not heard of Dr D K Chhabra, a senior neurosurgeon, who died recently. Over the decades his expertise, pragmatic advice and popularity had broken the shackles of his narrow surgical field coming to be known as a “brain-specialist”and a genuine adviser for all health problems. I got to know him in 1987 when I joined the upcoming Sanjay Gandhi PG Institute of Medical Sciences (SGPGI) in Lucknow as a young member of the faculty in Gastroenterology. He had moved from his alma mater the KG Medical College where he is still regarded as a legend. An omnipresent bachelor doctor living in the duty room readily available to help anybody anytime.He was tasked to heading and developing Neurosciences at SGPGI. He had an eye for detail and was tasked additionally by the director to set up not just his department, but the whole hospital, the building, equipment and the campus. DKC was a tall and handsome man who spoke little. But when he did inl...
1 comment
Read more