Closure of edu institutions: Health experts term CM’s decision bizarre

Punjab Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif has set an unprecedented and bizarre example of its kind in the epidemiological disease control amongst about 110 countries of the globe where dengue fever is endemic.
Public health experts and community medicine academicians were shocked to know about the chief minister’s decision of closing educational institutions including universities and medical institutes too.
According to the experts, the CM should have waited for the Sri Lankan experts before taking this counterproductive decision. They were of the view that by closing down medical institutes, the chief minister has shut down the potential of effective control.
According to Dr Aftab, Head of the Community Medicine Department University College of Medicine University of Lahore, none of these countries, some of which have shown an excellent control of Dengue Fever epidemics, have ever closed their education institutions in dengue epidemic.
He added though “we can see different guidelines and principles for control of this epidemic but let’s just review some of the facts related to the disease.”
Dengue fever always spread through a Vector which is a specific mosquito and never can have direct transmission like a droplet infection, while closure of institutions and abandoning the public gatherings can only be recommended in the diseases which spread through sneezing and coughing.
Eighty per cent of the infections are not serious infections and usually do not proceed to the stage where platelet count is needed and where any high tech equipment is involved. The mosquito which plays the role of vector in this disease is habitant of the domestic and peri-domestic places, meaning thereby that we have pushed the masses towards the breading sites of the vector instead of abolishing them, he maintained.
Dr Muhammad Aslam Bajwa, Assistant Professor at the department, drew the attention towards the guidelines of the World Health Organisation, which clearly state that it is a purely public health and sanitation disease and environment modification should include, drying the water collection sites specially where the fresh water is collected in the community and collecting as well as disposing the garbage from homes hence abolishing the peri-domestic breading sites of vector.
“Spraying Insecticides has a very less role in vector control of dengue fever as once again the main emphasis is on the environmental modification,” he said.
According to these experts, WHO recommends that public health bodies should be strengthened and community participation should be increased for achieving good control, “while we have abandoned the community participation by closing them in their homes where the risk is already maximum and lost the potential source of awareness and disease control by even closing the medical colleges and universities”.
So it is imperative that instead of giving stories and breaking news of the chaos and panic to the media there should be a serious effort by consulting some sound epidemiologist or even by reviewing the set guidelines of the WHO.