How India Is Setting An Example In Fighting Mosquito Menace But There's Still A Long Way To Go

A little insect with a sting having the effective capacity of mass destruction, that's a mosquito for you. It controls our dreams and decides how long we can stand straight even during the most pleasant days. It inflicts fear in the minds of humans because of that damage it can cause.

Every year with the onset of the monsoons, India is hit by several epidemic outbreaks, often caused by this usual culprit. India has a long history of mosquito-borne diseases that often turns into epidemic proportions, claiming thousands of lives every year.

Malaria, dengue, chikungunya, Japanese encephalitis, encephalitis, and yellow fever are the most common mosquito-borne diseases in India and every year the outbreak happens across the country.

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India is a safe haven for mosquitoes

Several reasons have made India virtually a safe breeding ground for mosquitoes and mosquito-borne diseases.

Climate change, rapid urbanization, a growing population and lack of sanitary waste and water disposal are some of the reasons that make India prone to mosquito-borne disease outbreaks every year.

It is not just the deaths caused by mosquito-borne diseases, the annual outbreaks also take a toll on the country's economy.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) had in 2016 stated that the socio-economic burden of malaria in India was Rs 11,640 crore while dengue cost the country nearly Rs 6,000 crore of annual economic costs including direct and indirect costs in terms of loss of production and medical costs.

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War on mosquitoes

Over the years, India has been spending a lot on efforts to eradicate the deadly mosquitoes.

In 2015, Prime Minister Narendra Modi joined 17 regional leaders in committing to malaria elimination in Asia by 2030 and endorsed a road-map to achieve this goal.

The National Framework for Malaria Elimination (NFME) 2016-2030 outlines India¡¯s strategy for elimination of the disease by 2030.

In 2017, India had launched its 5-year National Strategic Plan for Malaria Elimination, and it is already showing results.

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The World Malaria Report 2018 had found that the number of cases reported in India had seen a 24% decrease between 2016 and 2017. The study found that India had reported 3 million fewer cases in the same period the previous year.

One of the keys to achieve this was how the number of Malaria cases was brought down in Odisha, which accounted for 40 per cent of all malaria cases in the country.

¡°Making advances against malaria in these areas is crucial, considering they represent the majority of the country¡¯s malaria burden,¡± said Dr. Henk Bekedam, the World Health Organization Representative in India.

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Effective initiatives

Several initiatives, including massive scale up in the use of long-lasting insecticidal nets, training some 900,000 trained Accredited Social Health Activists (ASHA) workers and increasing awareness among the rural population all helped to bring down the number of case in Odisha.

And that can act as a model for the rest of the country, where there are similar challenges.

In 2018, India had joined 52 leaders of Commonwealth nations in their commitment to halve the burden of malaria across the Commonwealth within five years and joined ten other high burden countries to embrace the new country-driven approach ¨C ¡°High burden to high impact: a targeted malaria response,¡± a country-led approach that will be supported by WHO.