Anti-mosquito drive

An anti-mosquito campaign in the capital's Goran and Bashabo area, where spray and fogger machines were seen swinging into action in the presence of city corporation officials and higher government functionaries, received much media coverage recently. It was said to be part of South DCC's cleanliness drive, which, needless to say, would require full and sustained community participation in order to be really effective. Given the fact that the natural environment of the city has been badly degraded due to unplanned development and inequitable distribution of essential amenities, the city is too full of mosquito-friendly pockets in the form of clogged water bodies, canals and drains. Added to this is the general habit of indiscriminate dumping of refuse which makes a bad situation worse. It is reassuring to find that advisory committees come up now and then with quite sensible suggestions on how to tackle the problem.As a first step the public must be made aware of the fact that without the authorities and the people working together, on the individual and community level, no anti-mosquito drive can be effective. For example, the breeding grounds of the dengue-carrying Aedes mosquito are usually stagnant water in containers of all sorts, in and around houses. City corporation staff should not be expected to come and destroy such breeding grounds in private areas. The mosquito-maddened public is often found demanding aerial spraying or fogging around their houses when the mosquito population becomes intolerable. But it would be far more practical, and economically and environmentally sound, to destroy the eggs and larvae in the stagnant water sources, before they are ready to fly. Millions of taka are said to be spent annually on thousands of litres of poisons in the so-called mosquito control programme, regardless of the serious health hazards fogging and spraying may pose for vulnerable citizens, such as nausea, conjunctivitis, respiratory problems and even chronic ailments. This could be minimised if basic information on the life cycles of different kinds of mosquitoes ---- their disease-carrying potential, breeding and feeding habits, and how the most harmful species can be controlled ---- could be disemminated countrywide. Over a hundred varieties of mosquitoes are known to thrive in Bangladesh though only a few can transmit diseases like dengue, malaria, yellow fever and filariasiselephantiasis. There is one that feeds on the larvae of other mosquitoes. If the community and the DCC decision makers were informed enough, anti-mosquito drives could be made more effective. The job at hand is rather too problematic for any one government authority to tackle effectively. But community and corporate involvement could surely go a long way to keep the mosquito population down all year round, instead of waiting for them to take to wings and overwhelm the public. Therefore, the municipal authorities should work in close cooperation with the community and with organisations as well, in order to have a year-round 'control mechanism' in place. Chemical poisons must be used with the utmost caution because they often make the insects resistant, besides increasing the burden of toxins in the environment. Haphazard spraying and fogging, in fact, do more harm to human health than they do to either adult mosquitoes or their larvae. It would make more sense to have the life cycles of the insects in view so that timely action could be targeted, and the need for insecticides ultimately done away with, keeping in mind that the category of toxins usually deployed against mosquitoes, are reportedly carcinogenic in the long term. The more important goal should be to keep the city clean enough to make it really unfriendly to all kinds of pests and vectors.