New act on 'Prevention of mosquito breeding' soon

MINISTER of Health and Nutrition, Nimal Siripala de Silva has directed to prepare a Cabinet memorandum on the prevention of use of non-biodegradable plastics, polythene and other containers in order to prevent the deadly Dengue fever and Dengue haemorrhagic fever from spreading.

According to Ministry of Health and Nutrition, the new Act on "Prevention of Mosquito breeding" is now ready to be presented to Parliament. Minister of Healthcare, Nutrition Nimal Siripala de Silva directed officials and Nihal Abeysinghe, Director of Epidemiology Unit of Ministry of Health to prepare a Cabinet memorandum on the prevention of use of Non-biodegradable plastics, polythene and other containers and to arrange a high level meeting with the Minister of Local Government, Minister of Environment and the relevant officials of the same ministry.

The Minister of Health said so at the meeting of National Plan of Action Control and Prevention of Dengue Fever and Dengue Hemorrhagic Fever held at the ministry premises last Saturday.

Dengue fever ranks very high among the epidemic prone infectious diseases in Sri Lanka.

Since the early 1990s with increasing public health significance, numerous measures have been adopted by the authorities concerned and many organisations to halt its spread and destruction caused to human life.

However, none of these measures appear to have been totally effective considering the increasing trends of the disease in recent years.

The statistics of 2004 showed that it was the largest ever reported outbreak in a single year with 15,463 suspected cases and 87 deaths.

The disease tends to spread from larger cities to smaller ones and to villages infected by Dengue mosquitoes leaving out only a handful of areas like mountainous parts of the Central Province limited by the altitude.

Last year was relatively calm with only 5,958 cases and 28 deaths being reported with almost a 65 per cent reduction compared to the year before.

Therefore, the Ministry of Healthcare and Nutrition has taken an important step forward to intensify dengue prevention and control activities in Sri Lanka.

It was revealed at this meeting that the new Act on Prevention of Mosquito Breeding is now ready to present in Parliament.

At this meeting the Minister of Healthcare and Nutrition directed the officials of the Ministry of Health to prepare a Cabinet memorandum on the prevention of use of non-biodegradable plastics, polythene and other containers and to arrange a high level meeting with the Minister of Local Government and Minister of Environment and the relevant officials of the same ministry.