Prevention of dengue

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