The Vector Control Unit of the Central Board of Health is this week observing Mosquito Awareness Week with the focus on creative ways to fight the spread of this disease-carrying insect.
Principal Public Health Inspector, Julienne Mannix-Galloway said this year the Unit is focusing on source reduction; that is the removal not only of water catchments and containers around the home that provide breeding ground for the mosquitoes, but it is also removing bromeliad plants from government institutions as well.
“Bromeliad plants are those plants around the home that have the ability to store water for long periods of time. We are concentrating our efforts on removing them from these institutions because of their public health implications. These plants are known mosquito breeding sites. Our plan is to uproot them and to replace them with plants with opposite properties,” Mannix-Galloway explained.
This week, teams from the Unit will visit schools, police stations and an old-aged home as part of the outreach. The campaign goes by the slogan: Bite-free Garden Day.
“On Monday we visited the Bolans Police Station. On Tuesday (today), we will visit both the Jennings Secondary as well as the Jennings Primary School. On Wednesday, our team will travel to the John E. Knight Golden Aged Home and on Thursday, their next stop will be the University of the West Indies Five Islands Campus. For Friday, we are trying something different; it is dubbed, Fish against Larvae Day where the Vector Control Unit will distribute to home owners, who have large bodies of water near their homes, fish that are known to eat larvae for the fish to feed on the larvae as a form of mosquito control,” she further explained.
Using fish as a biological control method now forms part of the arsenal of weapons in the fight against the spread of mosquitoes.
