March of the mosquitoes

To be be laid low for more than a week by a virtually invisible enemy as a virus was indeed a very humbling experience. Not that as a journo one expected to be somehow immune to the sweep of those micro monsters. But with several eager volunteers ever in readiness to count the bones of a journo in these days of media activism, that the bone-crunching should happen through such an innocuous though lethal source is quite ignominous, so to say. Yet, being part of the exalted Chikungunya club brings to your system more than just pain; it imparts some enlightenment too. And the primary wisdom that dawns is that the mosquitoes out there are dead set to get you and we are all sitting ducks! Or crouching chicks, if you wish.

Yes, Chikungunya was a raging issue a month or so back with politicians of all hues oozing concern for the denizens of the State. But those were heady electoral days and the virus was just another political weapon in the unseemly battle between the Kazhagams. Once the dust settled down after the local body polls and the political parties had counted their chickens, chikungunya too was given a decent burial. So are we too assume that the virus has vanished after doing electoral duty and that the self respecting people of TN are all now standing tall and erect? If anything, post polls, not just chikungunya, but a host of sundry other gunyas wrought by a variety of viruses with varying degrees of virulence have taken grip of the State rendering more and more people on all fours.

Last month, the Government was at least denying; but this time around no one is even talking. That grave humanitarian issues should be lost in the political wilderness is indeed sad. And more painful is the fact that while people are coughing and crawling their way around, the overwhelming concern of those in power seems to be on how to keep the statues of their near and dear up and standing. The apathy and insensitivity of the political class is so stark and striking and has percolated down the line too with the official health machinery at a virtual standstill. Not just afflicted individuals, but the entire public healthcare system is creaking at its joints, more out of disuse than overload! But men in power seem to care less. That the national health minister hails from Tamilnadu is an irrelevant detail here! The priority looks to be that the loose-jointed UPA should not creak and crumble!

There is nothing surprising about the sudden spurt of viral infections. It is a post-rains phenomenon and a matter of conventional medical wisdom. Like politicians viruses too mutate and are good at beating the system, almost always remaining a step ahead of the defence mechanisms that the body has or acquires. It is always virus first and vaccines next and new viruses keep emerging. For chikungunya and its family of viruses, effective vaccines are yet to be found. Even for those viruses for which there are vaccines, like in the case of small pox and polio, the viruses themselves cannot be said to have been eradicated. At best, they are in abeyance and could mutate and rear their head in a more potent form sometime in future. Even the notorious H5N1 virus of birdflu fame has not yet caused a pandemic because it has not found it easy to spread from humans to humans. Once it does, humanity has had it.

But the current viruses doing the rounds in our neighbourhoods have been smarter. Taking off from their reservoirs in monkeys and some other animals, these viruses have found mosquitoes and flies as safe transport to spread themselves around. The Man-Mosquito-Man network has a proven track record and the viruses seem to have no reason to doubt its efficacy. Also, they seem to be dead sure that mosquitoes are here to stay and will never become extinct, particularly in third world countries, where proper sanitation is a far cry. In this, the viruses seem to have struck an unholy alliance with, who else, the politicians who all appear to have a vested interest in sustaining squalor. Indeed, poor urban planning, improper water management and sordid sanitary facilities are all primarily political legacies that have in turn facilitated viral epidemics. That billions of rupees of tax-payers’ money have failed to ensure their most vital necessity –basic health care — is a stinging indictment of the ruling classes down the years.

Then there is the proplem of misplaced public priorities. Viral and bacterial infections like diarrhhoea, malaria and dengue, do not normally hog headlines unless there is a political angle to them. They are not fancy illnesses that would interest the elite or gain the instant attention of donors, let alone eliciting healthcare ‘package deals’ from corporate hospitals or even bank loans to fund them! The world diabetes day was celebrated like some kind of a festival recently. While awareness of diabetes is good and the need for its control cannot be gainsaid, it still remains a lifestyle disease, wrought by affluence or a sedentary living, besides heridity. It is on the rise because of rising incomes and we invite it by our own actions or rather, inaction. But virals are beyond one’s control. You may close your windows and use repellants to keep off mosquitoes, but what about the open drainages and streets of sludge that breed them by the millions? And with a great part of the populace living on pavements and in inhuman conditions, with neither roof nor doors, is not talking of mosquito nets akin to asking them to eat cake? Really, no amount of individual endeavour can make up for Governmental lapses. But the failings, alas, are glaring.

A recent report in Time magazine claims that water and airborne viral and bacterial infections are greater killers than AIDS and diabetes. But in India, epitomised by TN, denial, cover up, cultivated ignorance and gross indifference to these all-too-visible dangers seems endemic. When diagnosis itself is deemed politically taboo, where is the question of prevention or cure? Little wonder, India tops the list of nations least prepared to meet a pandemic.

Indeed, a country aspiring to be a world-beater should be doing better than sneezing, coughing and blowing its nose, let alone crawling and crouching.

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