Why does a holiday have to be this stressful, especially if you have young kids? With an alarming rise in death toll I have to say Sri Lanka has lost the dengue battle or its losing it.

The health ministry and the environment ministries have failed the young children of this country. Considering the high death toll in an ideal situation they should resign from their posts since there seemed to be no political will to rectify.

This story was infact a plea from a mother of a 1 year old child who was a victim of dengue and was just released from the hospital. I do relate to her story .

Three years ago I was living on a prayer inside the Apollo ICU, with my 5 year old daughter who was battling a strange combination of Chikungunya and Dengue (DHF) at the same time. An island wide blood drive and eight packs of platelets she was out of hospital.

Since then I do have a travel advisory for parents with children, "please be careful and take plenty of mosquito repellents (never a believer of the latter but was forced to accept that repellents do work). How can any parent relax when you have to run around checking for mosquito bites and carrying thermometers around?

Within the last week alone 11 dengue deaths most being children. Wonder who is responsible for this? Most certainly this should be the responsibility of the environmental ministry to implant a cohesive action plan to tackle dengue, but where are they?

The past week I have heard from the health authorities that the children are brought to hospital at latter stages. Is there any literature indicating which stage that the children should be taken to hospital and how to monitor there progress? Or for that matter how to keep your environment clean.

Needless to say an ailing sewage system in the city of Colombo and the suburbs with its swelling population, mountains of garbage pile ups and the many construction sites are definitely culprits.

For years there seemed to be more talk on clearing up garbage and cleaning up the roads, people are yet to see the results. The garbage pile ups are all over Colombo including a mini one down my road, since it is a never ending battle with the CMC to collect the daily garbage the people seemed to have found a convenient alternative.

Any empty space or a bare land is easily converted to a dump yard. With Dengue reaching pandemic levels and the rising of my husband's stress levels my bags are packed and out of here, and I sigh in relief once I reach Changi. But what about all the parents who have to stay back and raise their children? Can the authorities fail them?

It is time Sri Lanka followed Singapore's concerted efforts to control dengue. Singapore is not a dengue free country; even as I write this I could see the weekly fogging outside. During dengue peak times fogging is done on a regular basis. The National Environment Agency (NEA) adopts a multi-pronged approach to control dengue.

Extracted from its web site

a. preventive surveillance and control;

b. public education & community involvement;

c. enforcement; and

d. Research.

Preventive Surveillance and control

Through data gathered during field surveillance and with the aid of the Geographical Information System, NEA conducts daily mosquito surveillance operations. The information enables NEA to move quickly into areas to do source reduction (i.e. remove/destroy breeding grounds found). These are important steps to prevent possible dengue transmission.

NEA's operations strategies are:

* Active surveillance in areas prone to dengue and/or where there is high mosquito population.

* Breaking the source of transmission as quickly as possible when cases (both suspected and confirmed) and clusters of cases emerge

* In 2006, NEA had doubled its manpower deployment for mosquito control to 500 officers and formed dedicated teams responsible for regular auditing, inspections and enforcement in each of the 84 constituencies.

* These teams, being familiar with the areas under their charge, are able to identify and pre-empt potential problematic areas quicker and more effectively.

* NEA had inspected 1.5 million premises and carried out more than 40,000 ground surveys in 2006, an increase of 60% and 29%, respectively, as compared to 2005.

* The number of breeding found in homes in 2006 was 44% lower than in 2005, this is observed despite the increase in inspections by NEA by 59%.

(b) Integrated Efforts with Other Agencies/Organizations

NEA works with various land agencies as well as private organizations and associations to ensure that there is a coordinated approach in keeping the mosquito population and dengue cases low. Some of the agencies NEA has worked with include:

i) Construction Sites

* Since 2001, an Environmental Control Officer (ECO) Scheme had been introduced in construction sites. Under the Scheme, construction sites are required to engage a part time or full time ECO depending on the cost of the development.

* These NEA-trained ECOs are responsible for maintaining the pest and mosquito control works within the construction sites.

* Today, only 6% of construction sites inspected were found breeding Aedes mosquito, down from 30% in 1999.

-The Island/Asia News Network