In the days to come, health wing officials from the Coimbatore Corporation will engage coconut vendors and puncture shop owners in their fight against mosquitoes. According to Commissioner G. Latha, after a recent meeting to review the performance of the health wing, the Corporation has decided to engage the coconut traders because after selling coconut, they just abandon the open shells, which after storing rain water, turn into mosquito breeding sources.
The Corporation has asked its health workers on the field to talk to the vendors, educate them on the dangers of abandoning the shells and to ask them to ensure proper disposal of the used, open shells.
Likewise, the Corporation has also asked its workers to engage puncture shop owners, who are in the habit of using tyres tied to poles to advertise their shops. Such tyres store water after rain and turn into mosquito breeding sources.
Ms. Latha says that the health wing workers will ask the puncture shop owners to make holes on the tyres so as to ensure absence of water stagnation. The Corporation will engage the coconut traders and puncture shop owners because the two are oft-ignored in mosquito-control drives. But the civic body will not limits its drive to those two people.
As part of the drive, the Corporation has set up a mechanism wherein sanitary inspectors, medical officers and urban health nurses will meet on a weekly basis on Fridays to study fever cases, from where the patients come and the need for fogging those areas.
If the urban health centres, managed by the Corporation, have fever cases from a particular area, the Corporation health workers will visit the area to carry-out source reduction.
Plus, the Corporation has also deputed workers to all the 100 wards to exclusively carry out malaria control programme.
Armed with a timetable at hand, the workers will visit all the streets in the wards to carry out source reduction — removing objects that could store water and turn breeding centres. And in the evening, the Corporation will follow up the action by carrying out fogging operation.
Deputy Commissioner S. Sivarasu says that the Corporation will carry-out the programme till December — when the North East Monsoon ends.
