MANGALORE: Beena, a ninth standard student, reportedly died of malaria at the Kudmul Ranga Rao Backward Communities Hostel in Mangalore earlier this week.

The Mangalore City Corporation and the district administration do not seem to put their act together even as many people are suffering from the disease.

Distribution of nets

The civic body, which had stocked 4,500 mosquito nets issued by the State Government in June for distribution among the below poverty line families in the city, did not distribute them till last week, when MLA N. Yogish Bhat forced the officials to open the room where the nets were stored and distribute them to the needy people.

Construction activity

Mangaluru Mahanagara Jaivika Malaria Niyanthrana Samithi convener Suresh Shetty said construction activity was mainly responsible for the spread of malaria.

Water gets collected around the site turning it into a breeding spot for mosquitoes. Director of the National Institute of Malaria Research, Bangalore, S.K. Ghosh says Malaria cannot be controlled by chemicals and drugs.

It has to be controlled by checking breeding of mosquitoes and destroying breeding areas, he added.

In his report to the Mangalore City Corporation, District Health Department and Malaria nodal officer, he has stated that there has to be a "social vaccine" against malaria. The social vaccine, he said, should be the ability of the people to identify mosquito breeding areas and take remedial action.

Parasite

Adviser to the Mangalore Malaria Control and Health Committee B.S. Kakkilaya says malaria parasite has the ability to escape human immune system.

It can survive within the host for years without harming him.

Mosquitoes are difficult to control once they develop wings.

It is therefore better to control them at the larvae stage, Dr. Kakkilaya points out.

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