Health authorities in Delhi are at their wit’s end to tame the shark-sized outcomes of the deadly bite of one small aedes aegypti mosquito.
Chikungunya has taken even the doctors by surprise — it was largely a disease of the southern states but has bit Delhi hard after a decade. AIIMS alone has tested around 900 samples of chikungunya in the last two months. (July, August).
This sudden spike along with the heavy load of dengue (and two malaria deaths) has set panic bells ringing — the season has just started, the epidemic is yet to peak, it usually happens around October and the visitation from the aedes aegypti mosquito stops only by mid-November.
But if the government and civic bodies’ response is a usual cycle of indifference and denial, the disease will spread to the border states which don’t have medical infrastructure like Delhi, causing many more causalities.
Right now, we’re in panic mode.
This happens as our equally hot and humid neighbour Sri Lanka has achieved a mega milestone — it has eradicated malaria for good. At its zenith, the disease affected two million people in the island country.
Here’s what the repeated attack of the mosquito-borne epidemic reveals about us: