Dengue prevention begins with respect for environment

What makes our city not so nice after all? We have our roots here but often choose to live elsewhere. The compulsions to do that may be legitimate but at the end of the day, it’s the city we escape from. For others, there is no choice. We must live here. And deal with it. With a resigned acceptance, with indifference, willingly trapped in the Bengali illogic of “cholche, cholbe”.What if we didn’t have to? What if each of us could make things better in small ways? The authorities and we citizens are equally responsible for the quality of urban life here. That realisation is probably the first step to making things better.
A social media wag coined a term recently — ‘Dengueshree’. A take-off on our Chief Minister’s bouquet of social work programmes for disadvantaged girls called ‘Kanyashree’, for which she received international recognition and an award last year. The dengue joke would be funny if it weren’t so scary. The virus has been around since 1780 when a world-wide dengue epidemic across continents was first recognised as such soon after its naming in 1779. The mosquito connection was only figured out in the 20th century. An Indian Journal of Medical Research article from 2012 titled ‘Dengue in India’, informs us: “the first epidemic of clinical dengue-like illness was recorded in Madras in 1780 and the first virologically proved epidemic of dengue fever occurred in Calcutta and the eastern coast in 1963-1964”. In the last 50 years, dengue has been treated and described, but scientific studies addressing various problems of the disease have been limited. Even though achievements are considerable, a lot still remains to create an impact.
West Bengal’s dengue outbreak started in 2005 and has been studied since. Dengue, like malaria and chikungunya, is a vector-borne disease. A vector is an organism like a mosquito or a tick, which can transmit its own infection to others, animals or humans. While malaria is the most widespread such disease, dengue is the fastest growing one. Water and its use has much to do with the spread of the disease. Calcutta has water as one of our biggest gifts, and we now seem to be making all attempts to make it a curse.
While we expect the public health department to offer solutions, do their job towards civic cleanliness and all of that, what can citizens do? For one, we should critically examine how each of us uses water. It is not for nothing do they say that the next world war will be about water. We should all be aware of the water situation in our city and the country. In Calcutta, we tend to take water for granted, surrounded as we are by the river, canals, wetlands, and waterbodies. Groundwater was plentiful till not too long ago. And then the real estate boom happened. These urban housing projects sucked up water with a ferocity and greed totally upsetting the underground water table. Why do you think
the taste of water in places like Salt Lake, areas in East Jadavpur and other parts of the city is salty, brackish? We were taxed for water from 2002, probably the last city to do so. Yet think about how we waste, letting it overflow, creating unwanted and unnecessary accumulation. Good places for vectors. Of course, our climate helps things along quite nicely. To top it all, we dispose of our garbage and waste carelessly, oblivious to basic civic sense. We all believe that it is someone else’s duty to clean it up.
In the gents loo of a popular bar on Park Street, one of the urinals has had a severely leaking tap for the last eight months, probably longer, I don’t know. That leak creates a filthy puddle, untold wastage, and surely provides ideal conditions for VBDs. Every person I have asked working in that establishment has told me, yes, we know, it has to be fixed. And that’s it. Everyone knows, no one really cares. Cholche, cholbe. Yet customers downing a fair bit of their income in that place, do nothing, say nothing, and what seems worse to me, expect nothing either. No amount of municipal preventive work can remedy that attitude.
The study conducted after Bengal’s 2005 dengue outbreak found that more than 60% of the disease affected were old dengue cases, while new ones were just 18%. That tells us as potential dengue patients we don’t really care. The prevention of dengue begins with how we, as citizens respect, yes respect, and treat our environment.
Songs about mosquitoes have been written for at least a couple of centuries if not more. They bother humans no end, and once Sir Ronald Ross discovered that malaria was a vector-borne disease right here in Calcutta in 1897, they are enemies we need to constantly build up our defenses against. Music can make that task a bit more pleasant.
Blind Lemon Jefferson wrote his blues lament Mosquito moan in 1929. The Doors’ second album after Jim Morrison’s death in 1972 featured their largest selling and last single post-Morrison, with their No moleste mosquito. A jazz/Mariachi influenced song, it is mostly instrumental, since the Spanish-English lyrics stretch to a grand sum of two sentences.
In the last couple of years, songs from contemporary music are telling us how to be safe from mosquitoes and disease. The US rap group Mosquito Squad’s song 5 Ts, and a song about preventing dengue by a reggaeton/Latin hip-hop outfit out of Nicaragua, are making music to help things along.