Punjab University Department of Zoology retired professor and renowned entomologist Dr Muhammad Saeed Akhtar has said that sustained control of the Dengue Fever Vector, Aedes aegypti, requires source reduction by environmental sanitation as well as emergency treatment against the mosquito.
While these days there is some decline in the population of Aedes aegypti, I am still receiving samples of Aedes aegypti larvae collected from desert coolers and water tubs in the bath-rooms from some localities including Wahdat Colony, Chauburji, Green Town, Gulshan-e-Ravi and Allama Iqbal Town etc.
He said in order to destroy the breeding places of the vector and because dengue fever vector control programme is community-based programme, it is highly important that residents of Lahore and its suburbs should drain out water from their desert coolers and spray them with some pyrethroid insecticides, before re-using desert coolers in the coming summer.
Dr Saeed said prevailing temperature conditions are favourable to some extent to some species of mosquitoes, Ae. aegypti is facing decline because most of the un-attended clean water reservoirs have dried up. Increase in the population of Ae. aegypti will not relate only to the onset of rainy season, rather it will start increasing during dry months, May and June, when the public will start reusing their desert coolers, providing moisture to the old eggs for hatching and breeding site to the left over population of the vector after the winter is over. "So, environmental sanitation (disposal of old tyres, broken plastic containers, cups etc) be given due consideration to control epidemic in the coming summer," he concluded.
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