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Ria Sinha
Ria Sinha trained as an infectious disease scientist at Imperial College London and Universiteit Leiden, the Netherlands, and is currently a lecturer in the Medical Ethics and Humanities Unit at the Li Ka Shing Faculty of Medicine, The University of Hong Kong. Her interdisciplinary teaching and research considers the complex and dynamic sociocultural, ecological, technological, and scientific determinants of infectious disease emergence and management.
The recent rise in imported malaria cases recalls a period in Hong Kong’s history when the disease threatened the city’s very existence. While it is unlikely that malaria will become prevalent here again, as global travel resumes, mosquito-borne diseases will again test the city’s resilience.
Liberal use of disinfectant may protect us from Covid-19 in the short term, but harm public health in the long run. In the current sanitising frenzy, the ominous threat of antimicrobial resistance has fallen off the world’s agenda.
Hong Kong can draw on both its history of epidemics and the talent and technological expertise in the Pearl River Delta region to tackle mosquito-borne diseases.