While the spread of dengue this year has been in no way near the epidemic that the nation underwent last year, the month of November has seen the highest number of recorded deaths from the disease for 2024 so far.
With only a month left until the next year, questions about how dengue is able to persist this late into a year are more than legitimate as it has historically been a disease contained within the confines of the rainy season, conditions in which the vector, the Aedes mosquito, is able to spawn.
At a micro level, efforts to control dengue have historically not been as comprehensive as they should. Since the Aedes mosquito mostly spawns in dirty, stagnant water, cleaning up the many canals and waterways running throughout the country was one of the most obvious ways to minimize their numbers. Of course, our canals are almost in a perpetual state of disrepair, and while the interim government has only recently started its canal clean-up drives, such operations need to be carried out periodically as maintenance.
Waste management is yet another area where Bangladesh, especially our urban centres, has historically faltered which has a direct tie to dengue. While the public plays a large part in maintaining the sanitary integrity of their environment, scattershot urbanization has also played a large part in ensuring that the climate for Aedes mosquitoes to breed is ideal.
Of course, all of this is side-stepping the fact that dengue also has a direct link to the climate crisis, which is palpably altering our country’s weather patterns in a drastic way -- according to a Lancet report, the basic reproduction number for dengue is high at 5.46 in Bangladesh, while the same for countries like India and Thailand has been estimated at around 2.5 to 4 during high-transmission seasons. Dengue cases have, then, surged as rising temperatures and heavier rainfall create ideal conditions for mosquitoes.
Short-term solutions such as area-wide repellent drives may help in the here and now, but the rising tide of dengue needs sweeping changes to the very way we treat our environment.
Sunday, March 23, 2025
