Kerala - Thiruvananthapuram   

‘Evolve new strategies for vector control’

Thiruvananthapuram: In the absence of a vaccine for viral diseases such as chikungunya and dengue fever, public health experts have called for an integrated approach in vector control programmes by adopting environmental, biological and chemical methods and by evolving new vector surveillance strategies with community participation.

Vector prevention and control strategies should be formulated by studying environmental factors such as climate and humidity, type of buildings, most popular breeding sites, effectiveness of environmental sanitation and other factors such as urbanisation and population movement, which might have a bearing on the propagation of an infection.

At a recent meeting of the Public Health Forum, a congregation of public health experts, epidemiologists and scientists, health officials pointed out that lack of community participation was perhaps the primary stumbling block in the way of an effective vector control programme.

It was pointed out at the meeting that monitoring vector indices in a sustained manner was difficult in a community set-up and that the health system needed to develop new methodologies for vector surveillance.

The message that controlling the mosquito population, especially the principal vector, Aedes aegypti and A. albopictus, which causes chikungunya and dengue fever, is the only method to prevent epidemics like the current one, has not percolated down to the grassroots. Aedes is a peri-domestic species – i.e. it breeds in and around the household and hence it is the responsibility of individual households to ensure that they are not, intentionally or unintentionally, helping mosquitoes breed.

It has also been suggested that community participation in vector control activities should be enlisted through law enforcement.

Maintaining low vector density is difficult without public participation because mosquitoes re-populate in an area no sooner than the spraying and fogging machines are moved to another site.

Kerala still does not have a Public Health Act, while nations such as Singapore, which has struggled with recurrent dengue and dengue haemorrhagic fever (DHF) epidemics, have enacted a Control of Vectors and Pesticide Act to discourage people from propagating mosquitoes around individual households.

Officials of Singapore’s National Environment Agency inspect homes regularly and the residents are fined heavily if their homes are found to be breeding mosquitoes.

However, even the 1956 Madras Act, which speaks of imposing fines for dumping garbage would hold good, if there was the political will to implement it strictly.

The Delhi Corporation now imposes a fine on people whose domestic premises are found to be breeding grounds for mosquitoes, it has been pointed out.

The public health experts suggest that the State should develop a vector control programme based on systematic entomologic surveillance and vector epidemiology data.

This would help control various vectors more effectively, on the basis of individual species’ breeding nature, habitat and other environmental factors.

Involving schoolchildren in mosquito control activities is another strategy that could be adopted in our settings.

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‘Evolve new strategies for vector control’

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