ON OCTOBER 17, two-and-half year old Kanika Agarwal bled to death due to dengue fever. That is nothing new to the citizens of Delhi, who saw close to 300 people (if the government is to be believed) die in the epidemic (which the government denies). But the fact that she and 20-year-old Abdul, who also died of dengue, were both residents of the campus of the country's premier medical institution, the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), makes those two deaths the symbols of how far down the abyss the government has pushed the country's health care system.

The tragedy was marked by an obnoxious drama of denials and trading accusations between government agencies and experts. The first cases of dengue deaths were reported as early as August 29. The first official high power commission for a day-to-day monitoring of the situation was set up as late as October 15, that too, on the insistence of the Delhi High Court. By then, at least 179 lives had been lost, most of them either children below 10 or youths below 20. And it is worth remembering that the entire health establishment seemed to be oblivious, or unwilling to react to what a judge of the High Court could on her own sense as a major crisis.

In fact, the roots of the tragedy lie much deeper. It is in the complete collapse of the scientific management of the health care system. It is the business of science to predict and thus pre-empt such crises. But the government agencies had no clue as to what might have been in the offing, despite the fact that the World Health Organization (who) had actually predicted the crisis. The mandarins of the health ministry had chosen to ignore them. The Aedes aegypti mosquito, which carries the dengue virus, breeds only in fresh clean water. The government could have easily prevented the crisis by heeding the who warning and telling the people to keep their room coolers and overhead water storage tanks clean.

The dengue vector strikes in daytime, while the temperature is above 28