Dengue Bill Brieger | 20 Aug 2024 07:24 am
Dengue in West Bengal — Methods of Infection Prevention
On August 18, 2024 Aprotim Cory Bhowmik posted this entry on Dengue in the class blog of the course, Social and Behavioral Foundations of Primary Health Care at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health
Dengue is an illness that we are not too familiar with in the United States, but it can have severe and sometimes deadly effects, including fever, fatigue, body aches, lymphadenopathy, and an increased chance of bleeding. This disease is spread by the Dengue virus, which is carried by the Aedes aegypti mosquito. West Bengal, a state in India, has become infamous for being a hub of Dengue infection. In 2022, with a population of over 100 million people, West Bengal had over 60,000 cases and 30 deaths.
Photo: A clinic with patients being treated for Dengue infection. (Romita Datta, India Today)
Since insect-borne diseases such as malaria are also common in this region, the people have thorough knowledge of how Dengue is spread and how mosquito nets and insect spray can be effective. Despite the daily use of these measures, however, Dengue continues to have a strong hold on the community due to (1) the presence of bodies of water that attract mosquitoes and (2) the presence of unsanitary sites (e.g., trash accumulation).
So, what can be done? The resolution would require steps to eliminate unwanted bodies of water and reduce sites of trash accumulation. Some government departments have addressed these issues:
- Department of Panchayats and Rural Development: surveys 300 households per week on cleanliness for Dengue prevention
- Department of Environment: has projects on pollution, coastal management, and biodiversity–but not Dengue prevention
- Urban Affairs and Municipal Affairs Department: surveys households regularly
- Department of Health: discusses treatment, but not prevention, of Dengue infection
However, these departments have either (1) nonspecific descriptions of their actions to decrease Dengue infection or (2) have no results documented. In order to decrease the incidence of Dengue, it would be prudent to press the most active department — Panchayats and Rural Development– on the results of their surveys and whether cleanliness has actually improved.
Irrespective of these results, there has been no data showing a decrease in Dengue infection in West Bengal as a whole. A reasonable proposal would be to incentivize the cleaning of unsanitary sites and inappropriate bodies of water by giving tax cuts to those that comply and/or levying fines for non-adherence. This reward system is common in many parts of the world, and unless concrete steps like incentivization are taken, Dengue infections will not decrease anytime soon.