14 June 2017 11:41 am
The number of dengue fever affected individuals in 2015 was 29,777. In 2016 it was 55,154.
Statistics for the first 5 months of 2017 show the affected individuals to be around 70.000 and the total number of dengue affected individuals is expected to rise.
Dinesh Weerakkody a Director of the National Health Development Fund, the coordinator of the project said that this is an initiative of Prime Minister Wickremesinghe and Health Minister Rajitha Senarthne to engage the private sector in the dengue awareness campaign of the Ministry of Health (MOH), given the challenges the Ministry of Health is currently facing to deal with the problem.
Leading companies and chains have all joined in to support the Ministry of Health’s campaign according to Weerakkody.
According to Medical professionals, the problem in Sri Lanka warrants urgent intervention and the State alone cannot eradicate dengue from our country. Individual responsibility is very much higher than the State’s. But the State’s responsibility is considerable nevertheless in the areas of garbage collection and effective patient treatment. There are specific aspects that the public and the private sectors should take care of in order to control this scourge according to health officials.
The private sector led campaign for the dengue prevention and control is through a Private-Public Partnership, according to Dr. Hasitha Tissera of the National Dengue Control Unit, The expectations according to Ministry of Health from the partnership would be to create
awareness to;
nTo prevent any late presentation to hospital and achieve zero deaths
nTo reduce potential breeding places from 100 percent to 10 percent
nTo reduce positive breeding places from 50 percent to 5 percent
According to Dinesh Weerakkody, the private sector companies can immediately help the effort of the MOH by doing weekly premises inspections and having weekly cleaning days and displaying the MOH material in their premises.