One Great Achievement

No, it is not winning a cricket test series; neither is it that the Jt Op has been asked to leave the SLFP; not even them Prodigal Sons being taken in with open arms, all sins forgiven and soon to be forgotten. The achievement is not even convincing our previous Prez to stay confined in his demesne in Medamulana and emerge only for R&R, since now he is not only causing mayhem within the land but even without. What a shame that our man in Malaysia was manhandled just because the man hated by the LTTE was visiting. (I presume that is the cause of the entire diplomatic brouhaha).

The achievement I speak of is within a field that affects every one of us: individually and collectively; directly and indirectly. You guessed right - health. And now you know what this cat is gleefully mewing over. The certification that Sri Lanka is malaria free. My goodness, that is great! Something to jubilate about, celebrate and don feathers of kudos and be proud of. We have to thank the health services mostly for this fact. The WHO with the highest officials present, declared that Sri Lanka is malaria free and gave us certification of the fact, in the presence of President Maithripala Sirisena and Health Minister Dr Rajitha Senaratne.

Dread debilitating disease

Those who know of malaria or have seen patients suffering from the disease will recognize that its total eradication is something to be over the moon about. Yours truly has seen men in places around Anamaduwa six decades ago waddling around huge-bellied. This was due to swollen spleens they said, consequent to frequent attacks of malaria. Her eldest brother was a government official in Anamaduwa when the town was the smallest of hamlets with one sillara kadé, the kerosene depot with the cart carrying oil to households parked outside with its bull getting restive. I suppose there was a bakery of sorts and a sub-post office. Newspapers and parcels were delivered by the morning bus from Kurunegala. Government officials were the District Medical Officer and his Assistant, the engineer and the Divisional Revenue Officer. The two wards in the hospital must have been full of malaria patients. There was a PWD depot and visiting surveyors who rigged tents and lived in the place until the road was repaired or built. A Village Tribunal judge too came over, resided for a week or two and departed. No police and no law courts; the nearest of these being in Puttalam where the Kachcheri was. Menika was a very young girl when she holidayed in Anamaduwa but even she, a tot, noticed the swollen stomachs. With it went lethargy, they said, and so even keeping a chena cultivation going was difficult to the malaria afflicted.

Nearer Menika’s home in Peradeniya there had been an epidemic of malaria and our family which lived close to a stream shifted house to Kandy to be away from the mosquito infested ela. These whining creatures were ubiquitous. In small numbers their sting could be contained, sleeping under nets or burning cashew skins to give out a pungent smell. But en masse they were truly dangerous, transferring the germ from an infected person to a healthy one.

The Dry Zone, already thinly populated was almost deserted until World War II, when widespread spraying of DDT was introduced. That saved the situation. Then came D S Senanayake and his zeal for colonization schemes; the first being at Kottukatchiya, a couple of miles from Anamaduwa on the Puttalam road.

Miracle deterrent

DDT - its name is too long to write here - was synthesized in 1874 but its insecticidal action was discovered only in 1939 by Swiss chemist Paul Herman Muller who won the Nobel Prize for Physiology and Medicine in 1946. So the Anopheles mosquito and other breeds along with various pestiferous insects were targeted. After initial success of DDT, there came to light its negatives. In 1962 Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring was published which stressed the negative impact of DDT and the increasing use of pesticides on the environment.

Chapter One starts thus: “There was a town in the heart of America where all life seemed to live in harmony with its surroundings…..Then a strange light crept over the area and everything began to change …. Everywhere was a shadow of death... There had been several sudden and unexplained deaths, not only among adults but even among children… There was a strange stillness. The birds, for example – where had they gone?... No witchcraft, no enemy action had silenced the rebirth of new life in this stricken world. The people had done it themselves … What has already silenced the voices of spring in countless towns in America? This book is an attempt to explain.” And thus she moves to detailing the evils of indiscriminate use of chemicals. “Silent Spring remains the classic statement which founded a whole movement.”

People woke up to the dangers of insecticides and pesticides. In 1972 DDT was banned in the US and triggered a world-wide ban. WHO recommended the use of insecticide treated nets, indoor spraying and other less drastic methods. The main consideration, as with dengue, is to obliterate breeding grounds for mosquitoes. Not easy but possible; at least in considerable measure. We know of the demise of butterflies and the danger of bees becoming extinct. No pollination, no plants and eventually no life on earth.

We saw on TV news the visit of WHO high-ups and their praise of Sri Lanka for its successful eradication of this dread, debilitating disease which starts with shivering. The attempt to wipe out malaria from among the diseases that beset us started long ago and succeeded when in 1963 only 17 cases of malaria were reported. And now we are free of it!

Concerted efforts are being made to contain the awful kidney condition afflicting so many in the north central areas of the island. So also the menace of the abuse of tobacco and alcohol and drugs. This last needs extra effort since children are the most affected and entire families are destroyed, if not physically at least emotionally. But a determined start has been made; praise be!

- Menika