By Carol Aloysius
Rat fever (Leptispiroris) is continuing to run wild as the total cumulative number of cases heads towards the 5,000 mark - nearly four thousand cases being from the Kurunegala district. Sixty persons have died so far of the deadly disease with the highest number of deaths recorded in the Gampaha district.
The cumulative number of cases this year has multiplied several times over by mid August, when compared to figures reported for the whole of last year. Kurunegala district which is the worst affected, had a staggering cumulative number of 1386 cases by August 18, 2011. It was a big increase from last year’s total number of 396 cases.
Colombo district which had 24 cases by December end 2010, already has 278 cases while Gampaha which had 13 cases in 2010, had 379 cases by mid August 2011.Hambantota had 116 cases in 2010, but by mid August this year this southern fast developing district had 422 cases. Kegalle which has already reported 256 cases this year had 431 cases for the entire year 2010. In all, a total of 4545 cases were reported for 2010 . This is 235 less than for the first eight months of this year, according to the Government Epidemiology Unit statistics upto August 18.
Similarly, the number of deaths recorded this year too soared, by three to five times more than the previous year. While the total number of deaths recorded was 122 last year, 60 deaths have already been recorded officially from January to mid August 2011. The highest number of deaths has been reported from Gampaha this year - eleven, just two less than the figure for the whole of last year, Kurunegala had 10 deaths compared to only one death for the whole of the year 2010, Hambantota eight deaths compared to half the number (4) for the whole year 2010, and Kalutara 7 which is nearly half the total number (18) for last year.
Although the number of cases has been declining since it peaked at 1,625 in March this year, after the Health Ministry initiated several innovative measures to contain the epidemic, the disease which has already overtaken the previous year in the number of cumulative cases recorded, is expected to rise with the onset of rains and flooding in the paddy fields during the harvesting season in October, Health Ministry sources told The Nation.
http://www.nation.lk/2011/08/21/news18.htm
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