Tackling the mosquito menace

D

dpandey

Adept
There is a village next to the apartment complex where I live. Dengue and chikungunya outbreaks have become a recurring phenomena in the village. Two ladies, who help me with house work, give me daily updates and its quite sad. I recently spent quite a bit of money helping them with treatment of family members.

I was wondering if anyone has any experience in mosquito control on a large scale. If there is a low cost solution, I do not mind spending some money to do it. I will figure out a way to fund the recurring expenses.

I am looking for solutions like buying a fogging machine and chemicals, or larvicides that can be put in water or some thing that will work on medium scale. Most of the families do use indoor mosquito repellents, but my guess is that it is insufficient.

Cheers
 
The village people will have a local corporator who they would look up as a god.
Why doesn't their god do anything?

The Municipal Corp can easily do fogging exercise daily/weekly.
 
ssslayer said:
The village people will have a local corporator who they would look up as a god.
Why doesn't their god do anything?

The Municipal Corp can easily do fogging exercise daily/weekly.
Click to expand...

Actually I wrote a sentence about it and deleted it because I didn't want to bring politics in. My understanding is that the ward is divided between Congress and BJP and these folks live in the 'wrong' area.

Besides, I am generally in favor of people taking charge of their affairs. If it doesn't cost a bomb, I would like that they finance it themselves. Every family ends up spending anything between 10-20k whenever the infection spreads.
 
i don't have any solution for you but just some ideas: you need to attack the source of this menace and create awareness.

as opposed to malaria, dengue spreads in relatively cleaner areas. so, people should inspect their rooftop water tanks, desert coolers, cisterns, drinking water cans etc. these breeding grounds should either be emptied or shut tight.

generally, we use mosquito protection during night time but dengue mosquito bites mostly during dawn or dusk. people should be asked to keep their arms and legs covered during daytime. also, put up posters of how dengue mosquito (aedes aegypti) looks like.

i think it's easier to tackle breeding of dengue mosquitoes, as (in my opinion) india is full of filth and we have very few clean open water sources to deal with :p

in the absence of appropriate chemicals, kerosene can be poured over filthy, open/stagnant water bodies such as village ponds, open drains etc. the idea is to create a film/barrier on the surface. this works for other types of mosquitoes.
 
Thanks everyone.

An update. I managed to contact someone high up in the municipality bureaucracy and he sent his men to clean up and disinfect the area. I haven't been able to extract the details of the procedure from them (the person in charge is a friend of someone in family, I have limited reach).

In the end I would still like the village people to take charge. Every family ends up spending about 5-10 thousands whenever the infection spreads. I talked to a few of them and they are willing to spend some money towards this.
 
Unless the community is really aware and serious of the menace nothing can help them. All you or civic body does is temp.
Make them aware of the diseases and specially how easy it is to prevent them without spending a dime. Many of such settlements have either open drainages or they use all types of vessels for water storage as water supply is not regular. Also common areas / puddles / open areas are places where stagnant water holds up and no one cares to clean it. One thing leads to another and sooner or later the entire community is a mess.

Very nice of you to at least give it a serious thought and have the willingness to do something about it.
An easy solution which we do at my uncle's farm is burn neem leaves in the house compound. Its very effective since the house in the farm is open from all sides and mosquito repellents just dont work.
 
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