Day 16: Dengue Fever

As we left the house this morning there was a cloud of smoke. The local authorities had just sprayed an insecticide (malathion) to reduce the mosquito population and the risk of Dengue Fever. As there is no vaccine, the only way to control it is to control mosquitoes. Dengue is  endemic to over 110 countries and the virus has 5 different types. We held our breath and continued onto the university for the second lecture. The students were attentive and some were a little shocked that they had a quiz since they had missed the first lecture. Tomorrow Sudeera is going into the field to retrieve the samplers we deployed and so we reviewed sampling and retrieval procedures.
Afterwards Thivanka and I went to a tea house for some black tea and enjoyed the busy Kandy streets pulsed with activity.

tea house

Thivanka's mom  approved of the sari fabric we purchased and knew exactly what to do!