How to combat dengue

For the past few years, the country has been dealing with the outbreak of dengue fever on a regular basis. Thousands of people have been affected by this deadly disease, while hundreds of them have lost their lives. Unfortunately, the country has failed to develop a standard mechanism to combat such emergency situations. Although the government has established departments on both the national and provincial levels to tackle such situation, but every disaster exposes some new breach in the system and proves that how incompetent the management is. On the other hand, when the coasts of the US were recently hit by a number of deadly hurricanes, only as low as dozens of causalities occurred. The number of casualties is quite a justifiable amount keeping in view the impact of category 5 hurricanes.

The country kept an eye on those storms from the beginning and showed no negligence in taking precautionary measurements that involved evacuation of millions of people which in itself was a show of greater administration and management skills. It is true that the comparison of both nations is unnatural and we lack sufficient technology and equipment, but what is further missing on our part is effort. We may lack technology and equipment, but better administration does not require any tools. It is now the need of the time that the country must advance in research and should become capable of combating at least diseases like dengue on its own.

Adeel Ahmad Sattar (Mansehra)