At a press conference on Wednesday, Entomologists said that the authorities should kill adult mosquitoes alongside larvae to contain the spread of dengue transmission in Dhaka.
They said that the city authorities were focused more on finding Aedes mosquitoes breeding grounds than killing the adult mosquitoes and added that due to such a myopic strategy adult mosquitoes continued to spread dengue transmission, dengue may even assume epidemic proportions.
They said that such a situation alongside the worsening Covid-19 may leave the country’s health sector in disarray.
They made the remarks at an online press conference organised by the Centre for Governance Studies on the topic ‘Dengue situation in Dhaka: How to stop epidemic transmission.’
The Institute of Epidemiology Disease Control and Research former principal scientific officer and medical entomologist Touhid Uddin Ahmed, CGS chairman and entomologist Manjur A Chowdhury and entomologist GM Saifur Rahman spoke at the conference, which was moderated by CGS executive director Zillur Rahman.
Manjur A Chowdhury said, ‘There were several possible moves to contain the transmission. The adult mosquitoes are responsible for dengue transmissions and we did not see any move to kill those mosquitoes by the authority concerned.’
He also said that if the situation continues, the country would break the 2019 record of hospitalised dengue patients and added that it is a threat that looms large.
Touhid Uddin Ahmed said, ‘Once the dengue virus entered into a locality, it will stay there. As we do not have any actual data on dengue patients, we depend on 41 government and private hospitals in Dhaka.’
We are edging toward an epidemic situation, he added.
‘There is no alternative to the authorities concerned to go-door to-door to contain dengue transmission. We should go all out to combat the crisis,’ he added.
‘If the city authorities started work around January-February, running a campaign targeting the breeding grounds till March, the situation would not have become so worse,’ GM Saifur Rahman argued, adding, ‘The way the two city corporations staff members were applying adulticides using the fogger machine, the campaign might only kill 20 per cent of the mosquitoes. They are covering open spaces but there are mosquitoes inside each household.’
‘If they spayed the insecticide holding the machine at a 45 degrees angle, maybe the second and third floors of residential houses can be covered. The insecticide easily settles down into the earth, which also helps in killing mosquitoes on the ground. To increase efficiency, the authorities need to create teams with skilled people to spray larvicide and adulticide,’ he added.
The total number of hospitalised dengue patients hits 5,192 in Bangladesh since January 2021 while 4,953 have been admitted to hospitals in the capital city of Dhaka.
More than 95 per cent of patients have been hospitalised in Dhaka alone with dengue, which is a viral-borne disease.
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