4&4 STEP CONTROL OF DENGUE
Posted on September 5th, 2016
Dr. Mareena Thaha Reffai, Sri Lankan Association of Muslim Women & Girls Dehiwela
It is heartening to see many institutes have taken interest in controlling Dengue. It will be very profitable if all get onto a single plan and mode of action and work hand in hand.
Actually if only the housewives can be persuaded to take the responsibility of making sure there are no breeding place for mosquitoes by and by the mosquitos will die. This can be done by the housewives in 4 steps.
1.0 Declare Sunday 10 am as National Anti-Dengue Hour. Since the eggs of the mosquitoes take at least 10 days to hatch checking once a week regularly will prevent them from breeding.
The whole nation must take interest in making sure to inspect the house premises and the gardens to check for possible dengue breeding places. A check list chart similar to the following to be used in every household every Sunday.
| Place | Wk1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 |
| Vases | |||||||||||
| Pots and trays | |||||||||||
| Fridge tray | |||||||||||
| Gutters | |||||||||||
| Kitchen | |||||||||||
| Pet feeds | |||||||||||
| Shower tray | |||||||||||
| Bird bath | |||||||||||
| Garbage |
- Garbage disposal into a covered container, either a compost bin, old bucket or even a pit but keep covered. The government can issue free compost bin to every household or give at a concessionary price. The housewives to be educated to put in ALL THE PERISHABLE GARBAGE into containers so that they are not lying around to collect water. It is good that they are already segregating NON PERISHABLES separately and handing over to the garbage collectors.
- To encourage planting and growing mosquito repellant plants such as maduru thala, sera, mint, vinka ( mini mal) in every household, in pots, milk packet bags or on the ground. Plant these even on the roadsides.
- To set up mosquito traps as follows:
Boil one cup of water with half a cup of sugar until all the sugar is dissolved; let it cool; add half a teaspoon of yeast and pour into the prepared plastic bottles as follows. Wrap them in newspapers or dark papers and leave them around the house and in the garden in shady areas; these attract the
The state must take 4 steps:
- Daily reminders in the Mass media –in TV, Radio, newspapers for the housewives to keep their surrounding mosquito free.
- Dengue detection team- train them to educate and assist the house holders in a friendly manner to keep a mosquito free environment
- Printing simple, easy to read leaflets in all three languages and distributing to each and every household through municipality workers and paste Posters all over the island reminding of the responsibility of every citizens to help curb dengue.
- Lane to lane meetings of housewives to encourage the activities
September 5th, 2016 at 9:05 pm
Dear Dr. Reffai,
Thank you for this useful information. Also I wanted to respectfully point out that not only private households, but government institutions, offices and hospitals are similar, if not far bigger breeding places for dengue mosquitoes.
My son and wife both contracted dengue while the little one was hospitalized for some other illness. My wife stayed with him in the same room and therefore was probably also bitten by the same mosquitoes.
During Gota’s tenure in the Ministry of Urban Development, I think dengue prevention measures were not limited to private households and -although during that time, these activities were definitely not 100 percent effective- I hope it’s still being done today.
Can you please enlighten us, to say whether the Sri Lankan community of Medical doctors might be taking some steps to at least enforce the above rules that you have mentioned, in hospital environments?
Kind regards