Beware: dengue hits the city

Colombo University, schools, institutions under surveillance:

By Ranil Wijayapala

Dr Pradeep Kariyawasam

Nisansala, the 21-year-old second year student of the Colombo University Law Faculty might not have thought her dreams would come to an abrupt end so early, as she was deeply engaged in her studies to complete her assignment by the following day.

She worked tirelessly till late evening on May 29 disregarding the rising temperature in her body after taking a few paracetamols from the University Medical Centre as she was keen to finish her assignment.

Nisansala did not want her weakening body to defeat her courage and determination and woke up as usual the following day, may be to hand over the assignment on time. But her determination was not that strong enough to get herself on her feet and to defeat the trouble-maker which was weakening her body. She felt that she was going to fall. But leaving no time for her to cry for help she collapsed on the floor.

Her friends rushed her to the Colombo National Hospital without knowing that it was a fatal fall that Nisansala had.

It was only after admission to the hospital that they came to know that Nisansala had been infected with dengue. At the time of admission she was in critical condition and was treated at the Intensive Care Unit.

Nisansala Samarasinghe

She struggled with death but to no avail. Finally she had to bow down to death on Wednesday, six days after admission to hospital, shattering all her hopes for a brighter future. That was how the life of Nisansala hailing from Debathgama, Kegalle who made a humble effort to make the future of her family a brighter one after entering the Law Faculty of Colombo University was snuffed out by the killer mosquito dengue roaming around the vicinity of the university.

Finally, a bright student at the Colombo University Law Faculty had to carry the message to her fellow students at the University that their lives are in danger and at last as she breathed her last the entire university community was alerted on the risk they were trapped in.

The Colombo Municipal Council Public Health Department which inspected the university premises recommended to the university authorities to close the Faculty of Law and the Faculty of Management to clean the water collected in some of its buildings that have turned into breeding ground for mosquitoes. The Faculties were closed till June 10 for the cleaning process.

According to the Chief Medical Officer the Colombo Municipal Council, a parent of the Management Faculty of the Colombo University alerted them about the situation at the Colombo University.

“A thick layer of collected water was there in one building due to the leakage of the top floor and there were thousands of mosquito larvae in it. So we recommended the University authorities to close down the Faculties and do the cleaning up”, Chief Medical Officer of the CMC Dr. Pradeep Kariyawasam said.

But, Colombo University is not the only institution that has become breeding grounds for mosquitoes. The Public Health Department of the CMC has found 62 schools in and around Colombo are having mosquito breeding grounds.

“We inspected about 137 schools and took 11 schools to Courts and issued notices to 51 schools. The eleven schools taken to Courts were Ananda College, Isipathana Vidyalaya, Ananda Balika Vidyalaya, Asoka Vidyalaya, Hindu Boys College, C.W.W. Kannangara Vidyalaya, Presbitarian College, Zahira College (Construction site only), Sujatha Balika Vidyalaya, St. John’s College and St. Anthony’s College”, he said.

“We find mosquito larvae in these schools and that is why we took them to Courts. Among the schools we issued notices were Mahanama College, St. Peter’s, Lumbini Vidyalaya, Hindu Ladies College, Visakha Vidyalaya, St. Clare’s School, Visakha Balika Vidyalaya, Sirimavo Banadaranaike Vidyalaya, Devi Balika Vidyalaya, Bishop’s College, Methodist College, Royal College and Thurstan College”, he said. The inspection of schools did not come as a surprise but with an alarming message to schools as CMC found that more than 70 percent of dengue cases reported in the Colombo city limits are among the students between the age of 5 and 20.

Law Faculty building

Drain in the premises of the Management Faculty

This year the CMC has recorded 1,450 cases of dengue. Compared to last year there was a 23 percent increase in dengue cases in the city. In the month of May there is 20 percent decrease in the dengue cases compared to the corresponding month last year.

“That is going down. But what is alarming is that more and more schoolchildren aged between 5 and 20 are getting ill. If we compare statistics of the past few weeks it tells us that about 70 percent of patients are children. That is why we started inspecting schools”, he said.

That indicated there was something wrong with the system and we needed to overcome it as the rainy season was continuing.

According to Dr. Kariyawasam the attitude of some school principals in the Colombo city is a big barrier in facing this situation. “Many principals think that they are not accountable for the situation. They are not interested at all in dengue control programs. They are very indifferent to this situation and are having an attitude that we the CMC is welcome to do as we wish”, he said.

But with this situation the health authorities have decided to recommend the Government to make it mandatory for the school principals or the head of the institutions to be responsible for the mosquito breeding grounds inside their premises.

“They have to see this situation because this is an infectious disease. Although the number of deaths has gone down, a lot of people suffer. Having many school children is the main issue”, he said.

The lack of space, darkness and large number of students are major issues in the schools that made students vulnerable for this disease.

“From the Colombo district one third of the population is in the Colombo city. So we have like one third of the patients in the Colombo district also.

But Colombo should have more because the population density is quite high in Colombo and few mosquitoes can infect a lot. As they say three mosquitoes can infect 100 people”, Dr. Kariyawasam said.

“Although there is less mosquitoes in the city than the outskirts, we have quite a high number of dengue patients. We have a large number of educational institutes, a large number of government institutions and people studying and working during day time. So the mosquito won’t stop at biting one person, but will bite many. That is why we carried out these raids”, he said. “Of course where there is development in the city we find less number of dengue patients in the city”, he said. “If we talk about the university premises the law Faculty incident, university authorities and the students also responsible for the situation. The university authorities can get the help from the students to clean up the university environment”, he said. Dr. Kariyawasam lamented that nothing is happening at ground level despite the initiation of a lot of programs to combat dengue at grass roots level.

“We had taught so much but no one is practising them. That is an attitudinal problem. I am not talking about the dengue disease. I am talking about the environmental management as a whole. With little effort we can create a nice environment for the children to study and nice environment for people to live”, he said.

“As the CMC we can look into the complaints. We don’t have enough staff to check each and every 120,000 premises in the city. Some premises are one perch lands. The officers can’t go to each and every place. We can join hands with the Forces and go and do large scale inspections. Then we also can spray and fumigate the places”, he said. To control the situation in Colombo schools the CMC is planning to spray locally made BTI.

“We have bought a truck mounted machine and we are going to spray BTI to all the schools in the Colombo city. We will have 147 schools and we will somehow spray all the schools”, he said. But that alone will not solve the problem. The schools have to work with the neighbouring people to create mosquito free zones 100 yards to 150 yards radius from the school.

“We did a program like this in 2006 where the number of students with dengue went down by 40 percent. That is a significant number. I think they all should do this and also the government institutions also can do things like that”, he said.

“With the continuation of the rain pattern I feel that by end of June, July we will have a massive outbreak. That is why we want to stop it now. In the next few weeks we will cover big land areas than the numbers of premises we cover. Then we can control the disease”, Dr. Kariyawasam said.

Meanwhile, the Colombo University following the report of dengue breeding grounds has also initiated a number of programs to prevent the spreading of dengue.

According to A. Sarweswaran, Senior Lecturer, Faculty of Law of the Colombo University, the university authorities are discussing to have a log book to report the mosquito breeding grounds in the university premises for the relevant officials to take action.

“In addition a shramadana has also been organised to clean the university premises on Saturday”, he said.

He said though the academic staff is not responsible for this situation, if the students and teachers maintain good communication, this kind of problem can be solved.

He said that the university will also seek the support of the other institutions in this regard.