People asked to join hands in source reduction exercise

‘Spend two hours on Sundays in clearing mosquito breeding sites’

Deputy Commissioner Sasikanth Senthil S. speaking at an interaction programme in Mangaluru on Friday.

Giving impetus to the ongoing source reduction exercise in the city to control dengue, Deputy Commissioner Sasikanth Senthil S. on Friday asked people to spend two hours on Sundays, starting from July 28, in clearing mosquito breeding sites in and around their houses.

“Our focus is on destroying larva of dengue-virus carrying Aedes aegypti mosquito that breeds in fresh water,” Mr. Senthil said and pointed out that this mosquito breeds in small fresh water stocks if they remained un-cleared for a week inside houses, gardens and on terraces.

He was speaking at a Meet-the-Press organised by the Dakshina Kannada Union of Working Journalists at the Patrika Bhavan here on Friday.

The district administration, he said, was vigorously carrying out source clearing exercise since July 19 and it has brought down the larval count significantly. “If people join and carry forward the exercise, it will help in effectively combating dengue,” he said.

Despite several years of campaigns on source reduction, Mr. Senthil said, people largely were not aware about larva of Aedes aegypti . “You find these worm-like creature moving in small fresh water stocks. These are being mistaken as water worms. People need to identify stocks of water with larva and clear it,” he said and added that if it was not cleared then that larva will become a mosquito within a week.

Mr. Senthil said that unlike malaria-parasite carrying

Anopholes mosquito,

Aedes aegypti mosquito flies for a small distance and it resides within people’s residences. “If anybody is infected with dengue, the primary aspect that needs to be done is to find the source within and around the house and destroy it,” he said. The infected person should take medicines and necessary precautions against getting bitten by the mosquito that spreads the virus to other family members.

Cure

Of the 482 persons who have tested positive for dengue so far, the Deputy Commissioner said, nearly 400 have been cured of the viral infection. As against 19 fresh cases of suspected dengue infection reported on July 18, 2019, 18 were discharged on that day itself. Similarly, of the 43 who were admitted on July 19, 41 were discharged. “Now, the number of fresh cases reported and those getting discharged was the same,” Mr. Senthil said.

District Health and Family Welfare Officer M. Ramakrishna Rao said that analysis of 46 blood samples revealed prevalence of dengue 1 and denure 3 virus stream in Dakshina Kannada.

44 fresh cases

As many as 44 fresh suspected dengue cases were reported in the district on Friday. A release said, 40 such cases were reported in the city, while four were from Bantwal.

Meanwhile, a team from the district administration released guppy fish in the waters of Gujjarakere on Friday.