DCC and the community must act before the mites take to wings
Saturday, 5 September 2009
Nerun Yakub
Dhaka City Corporation mosquito control personnel were recently photographed absurdly testing pesticides on adult mosquitoes confined inside nets. Isn't it rather obtuse to wait for the mites to take to wings when it is far more practical and sound, both economically and environmentally, to get rid of the eggs and larvae in the stagnant water sources, bushes and hedges ? With widespread water-logging a part of life in this mal-developed city, pretty soon the mosquito population will burst upon us and generate the usual panic about diseases like dengue, malaria, elephantiasis and other such mosquito-borne horrors. DCC therefore must not waste time dithering over what to do. If poisons it has to use, then for health's sake, let it be one of the safest kind, if there's any such thing as a safe pesticide flying about in the air and landing invisibly everywhere !
DCC has been spending millions annually on thousands of litres of poisons, fogging and spraying them and inevitably leaving behind serious side effects on vulnerable citizens. These include nausea, conjunctivitis, respiratory problems and chronic ailments. Neither the victims nor the doctors are aware that these health conditions may be linked to the indiscriminate use of mosquito control poisons in the city. In this season of swine flu ----- and God knows what other emerging or re-emerging diseases we await ----- it would be doubly hazardous to use pesticides in open air, now or in the near future. What then can DCC do to effectively control mosquitoes and contain them at tolerable levels ?
It is no secret that the corporation is more adept at spending on totally unnecessary heads and in showcasing activity simply to feed the ego of the city fathers rather than serving the tax payers. Take, for example the purchase of costly street-cleaning trucks some years ago ---- which proved useless for our roads ---- ugly steel containers for garbage, costing several hundred thousand taka each, or the so-called Ultra Low Volume (ULV) spraying machines to kill mosquitoes, eight of them, at nearly 1.4 million apiece.The tragedy of Bangladesh is that the incidence of Pukur Churi (grand larceny) is so common in most spheres of public life that nobody seems to bother to ask 'why'? There may be no tolerance among political rivals seeking public office but in amassing unearned income they are on the same wave length. People could have forgiven these weaknesses if the DCC had shown some seriousness in tackling the city's problems. But one finds them busy, like most politicians, planning publicity stunts, doling out patronage to their followers but doing precious little in improving civic amenities.
Some years ago Dhaka University students were amused to find a machine-mounted vehicle enter the campus and proceed to spray the tree-tops as if the dengue and malaria-carrying mosquitoes nest among the leaves of the Hijol and Tomal ! DCC personnel need not be entomologists to learn basic lessons on the life cycles of different kinds of mosquitoes inhabiting Bangladesh, specially crowded cities, their disease-carrying potential, breeding and feeding habits, and how the most harmful species can be controlled. We are told over a hundred varieties thrive in Bangladesh but only a few of them transmit diseases like dengue, malaria, yellow fever and filariasis/elephantiasis. There is even a friendly kind that feeds on the larvae of other mosquitoes.
An O'level (classes 9 &10 ) text book on tropical health science should suffice to educate both the community and the DCC officials on how best to plan a reasonably effective anti-mosquito drive. But to be fair, one must not put all the onus of tackling these ubiquitous mites on the DCC alone. Although the vector controllers are not exactly famous for their work ethics or their competence, it must be said that even if they had the skills, the job at hand is far too big and complex for any one government authority to tackle effectively, given the appalling degradation of the living environment in urban Bangladesh. Community and corporate involvement is vital for controlling the mosquito population all year round, rather than wait for them to overwhelm the public.
Decades of mal-governance and centralization, disregard for rational and sustainable development, and other fallout from ignorant and myopic politics, have turned the cities, the capital in particular, into what it is today --- an environmental nightmare with horrendous pollution of land, water and air. The relentless expansion of squatter settlements and their unbearable squalor are all consequences of unwise planning and skewed priorities. Poor rural migrants who exist on the fringes, clustering in mastaan-owned illegal settlements on the banks of jheels and khals, have as much right to basic amenities as do the better off sections in the city. Attending to their rights as citizens --- guaranteeing municipal services, for instance ---- would be the first essential step towards arresting further degradation of the natural and built environment, and in the process, make out habitat less vector-friendly. Clogged drains and stagnant water bodies must be regularly cleaned and garbage disposed of properly.
The natural drainage system has been effectively destroyed by both legal and illegal grabbers of the network of canals, lakes and rivers that used to keep greater Dhaka healthy and resourceful once upon a time. By the1980s most of these water bodies had shrunk under lopsided development plans---- destroying Dhaka's God-given sweet water resources and degrading the very efficient drainage and waterways system that greater Dhaka was famous for. Today, most of the 20 or more of these water sources have no outlet. Is it any wonder that, with the growing density of the population, the mountains of garbage generated by them, that vectors like rats and mosquitoes, should breed with abandon ?
Our decision-makers should realize that vector control has to be a year-round activity. The municipal authorities must work in close cooperation with the community and with organizations and individuals, in order to have an effective 'control mechanism' in place. While using chemical poisons let us exercise the utmost caution lest they induce resistance in the insects and increase the burden of toxins in the environment that people are forced to suffer from. Indeed, haphazard spraying and fogging do more harm to human health than they do to either adult mosquitoes or their larvae. If the life cycles of the insects are kept in view, timely action can be targeted and we could perhaps do away with the need for insecticides altogether. Mark you, organophosphate pesticides, which are the category of toxins usually deployed against mosquitoes, are known to be carcinogenic in the long term. Better to save the funds and divert them to keep the city clean ---- up to the standard deserving of the national capital.
Dhaka City Corporation mosquito control personnel were recently photographed absurdly testing pesticides on adult mosquitoes confined inside nets. Isn't it rather obtuse to wait for the mites to take to wings when it is far more practical and sound, both economically and environmentally, to get rid of the eggs and larvae in the stagnant water sources, bushes and hedges ? With widespread water-logging a part of life in this mal-developed city, pretty soon the mosquito population will burst upon us and generate the usual panic about diseases like dengue, malaria, elephantiasis and other such mosquito-borne horrors. DCC therefore must not waste time dithering over what to do. If poisons it has to use, then for health's sake, let it be one of the safest kind, if there's any such thing as a safe pesticide flying about in the air and landing invisibly everywhere !
DCC has been spending millions annually on thousands of litres of poisons, fogging and spraying them and inevitably leaving behind serious side effects on vulnerable citizens. These include nausea, conjunctivitis, respiratory problems and chronic ailments. Neither the victims nor the doctors are aware that these health conditions may be linked to the indiscriminate use of mosquito control poisons in the city. In this season of swine flu ----- and God knows what other emerging or re-emerging diseases we await ----- it would be doubly hazardous to use pesticides in open air, now or in the near future. What then can DCC do to effectively control mosquitoes and contain them at tolerable levels ?
It is no secret that the corporation is more adept at spending on totally unnecessary heads and in showcasing activity simply to feed the ego of the city fathers rather than serving the tax payers. Take, for example the purchase of costly street-cleaning trucks some years ago ---- which proved useless for our roads ---- ugly steel containers for garbage, costing several hundred thousand taka each, or the so-called Ultra Low Volume (ULV) spraying machines to kill mosquitoes, eight of them, at nearly 1.4 million apiece.The tragedy of Bangladesh is that the incidence of Pukur Churi (grand larceny) is so common in most spheres of public life that nobody seems to bother to ask 'why'? There may be no tolerance among political rivals seeking public office but in amassing unearned income they are on the same wave length. People could have forgiven these weaknesses if the DCC had shown some seriousness in tackling the city's problems. But one finds them busy, like most politicians, planning publicity stunts, doling out patronage to their followers but doing precious little in improving civic amenities.
Some years ago Dhaka University students were amused to find a machine-mounted vehicle enter the campus and proceed to spray the tree-tops as if the dengue and malaria-carrying mosquitoes nest among the leaves of the Hijol and Tomal ! DCC personnel need not be entomologists to learn basic lessons on the life cycles of different kinds of mosquitoes inhabiting Bangladesh, specially crowded cities, their disease-carrying potential, breeding and feeding habits, and how the most harmful species can be controlled. We are told over a hundred varieties thrive in Bangladesh but only a few of them transmit diseases like dengue, malaria, yellow fever and filariasis/elephantiasis. There is even a friendly kind that feeds on the larvae of other mosquitoes.
An O'level (classes 9 &10 ) text book on tropical health science should suffice to educate both the community and the DCC officials on how best to plan a reasonably effective anti-mosquito drive. But to be fair, one must not put all the onus of tackling these ubiquitous mites on the DCC alone. Although the vector controllers are not exactly famous for their work ethics or their competence, it must be said that even if they had the skills, the job at hand is far too big and complex for any one government authority to tackle effectively, given the appalling degradation of the living environment in urban Bangladesh. Community and corporate involvement is vital for controlling the mosquito population all year round, rather than wait for them to overwhelm the public.
Decades of mal-governance and centralization, disregard for rational and sustainable development, and other fallout from ignorant and myopic politics, have turned the cities, the capital in particular, into what it is today --- an environmental nightmare with horrendous pollution of land, water and air. The relentless expansion of squatter settlements and their unbearable squalor are all consequences of unwise planning and skewed priorities. Poor rural migrants who exist on the fringes, clustering in mastaan-owned illegal settlements on the banks of jheels and khals, have as much right to basic amenities as do the better off sections in the city. Attending to their rights as citizens --- guaranteeing municipal services, for instance ---- would be the first essential step towards arresting further degradation of the natural and built environment, and in the process, make out habitat less vector-friendly. Clogged drains and stagnant water bodies must be regularly cleaned and garbage disposed of properly.
The natural drainage system has been effectively destroyed by both legal and illegal grabbers of the network of canals, lakes and rivers that used to keep greater Dhaka healthy and resourceful once upon a time. By the1980s most of these water bodies had shrunk under lopsided development plans---- destroying Dhaka's God-given sweet water resources and degrading the very efficient drainage and waterways system that greater Dhaka was famous for. Today, most of the 20 or more of these water sources have no outlet. Is it any wonder that, with the growing density of the population, the mountains of garbage generated by them, that vectors like rats and mosquitoes, should breed with abandon ?
Our decision-makers should realize that vector control has to be a year-round activity. The municipal authorities must work in close cooperation with the community and with organizations and individuals, in order to have an effective 'control mechanism' in place. While using chemical poisons let us exercise the utmost caution lest they induce resistance in the insects and increase the burden of toxins in the environment that people are forced to suffer from. Indeed, haphazard spraying and fogging do more harm to human health than they do to either adult mosquitoes or their larvae. If the life cycles of the insects are kept in view, timely action can be targeted and we could perhaps do away with the need for insecticides altogether. Mark you, organophosphate pesticides, which are the category of toxins usually deployed against mosquitoes, are known to be carcinogenic in the long term. Better to save the funds and divert them to keep the city clean ---- up to the standard deserving of the national capital.