Prevention of dengue

In articles and advisories from the Ministry of Health one gets the impression that the aedes mosquito breeds only in clean water.

On several occasions, I collected some aedes larvae in dirty and muddy water and later put them in several large bottles. After some time, these larvae turned into aedes mosquitoes. My conclusion is that, while it is true that aedes mosquitoes prefer to produce eggs in clean, still water, they can use any standing water. This means that we must take precautions with any standing water.

Then I have also observed that the larvae put in the bottles died after the water was mixed with abate powder. However, when the larvae had turned into pupae, the pupae would continue to live and they would make jumping movements. Both the larvae and the pupae died when the surface of the water was covered with a layer of oil.

This means that mixing water with abate powder must be coupled with fogging to kill the adult mosquitoes. Putting abate powder into muddy or dirty water will be ineffective. The most appropriate method is to pour kerosene on this muddy pool of water so that the water surface will be covered with a layer of oil. In this way, both the larvae and the pupae can no longer get oxygen. Indeed, this method will cause some pollution but this is the risk we take in our effort to kill all aedes mosquitoes. In fact, this was the method that was adopted to eradicate the mosquitoes that caused malaria when Indonesia was still a Dutch colony.

Using mosquito repellent only without killing them will be useless in our effort to eradicate dengue hemorrhagic fever. Burning mosquito coils will be of little use in this context because it is effective only against mosquitoes flying with open stigmata but will be ineffective against mosquitoes that land on your clothes with closed stigmata.

SUNARTO PRAWIROSUJANTO

Jakarta