By Uditha Jayasinghe<\/p>\n
COLOMBO, June 19 (Reuters) – Sri Lanka is battling the worst outbreak of mosquito-borne dengue fever in years, with more than \u200c44,000 cases and 28 deaths recorded since January, an official said \u200con Friday, putting public hospitals under strain.<\/p>\n
Dengue is common during Sri Lanka’s monsoon season, but unplanned \u200burbanisation coupled with damage caused by Cyclone Ditwah, which hit the island nation in late November, has worsened the outbreak this year, authorities said.<\/p>\n
The number of dengue cases nearly doubled from 5,651 in April to 10,638 in the first two \u200cweeks of June, data from \u2060the National Dengue Control Unit (NDCU) showed.<\/p>\n
“We noticed this increase after the cyclone,” Dr. Prashila Samaraweera, consultant community physician and NDCU \u2060spokesperson, told Reuters.<\/p>\n
“A lot of debris was in our environment, so we noticed a lot of mosquito breeding places, and our entomological indices were high from that \u200btime.”<\/p>\n
With 51,000 \u200bcases recorded in the whole of last \u200byear, the rate of infections \u200chas risen sharply, Dr. Samaraweera said. Infections are likely to increase for at least two more weeks before tapering off, she added.<\/p>\n
SURGE COULD PUT HEALTH FACILITIES UNDER SEVERE STRAIN<\/p>\n
A further uptick in patient numbers could put public hospitals under severe strain, Sri Lanka’s health minister Nalinda Jayatissa warned on Thursday.<\/p>\n
More than half \u200cthe cases are from the western region \u200bof the country, including 9,429 cases from commercial \u200bcapital Colombo. Eight other districts \u200bhave reported more than 2,000 patients since the start of \u200cthe year.<\/p>\n
The 28 deaths include five \u200bchildren.<\/p>\n
Patient numbers for this \u200byear could end up matching the last major outbreak in 2019, authorities have warned, when Sri Lanka recorded over 105,000 dengue patients.<\/p>\n
Schools, homes, \u200bconstruction sites, and public \u200cbuildings are being cleaned up during a special program launched by Sri \u200bLanka’s health authorities and other public officials till next Monday.<\/p>\n
(Reporting \u200bby Uditha Jayasinghe; Editing by Jan Harvey)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Uditha Jayasinghe COLOMBO, June 19 (Reuters) – Sri Lanka is battling the worst outbreak of mosquito-borne dengue…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":747227,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[49,48,34850,84,267498,267500,267499,130791,7098],"class_list":["post-747226","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-health","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-dengue-fever","tag-health","tag-national-dengue-control-unit","tag-ndcu","tag-prashila-samaraweera","tag-public-hospitals","tag-sri-lanka"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/747226","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=747226"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/747226\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/747227"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=747226"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=747226"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=747226"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}