Vector Control Unit Revisits Mosquito Breeding Grounds

Kim Bautista

On the ground, work by the Vector Control Unit of the Ministry has been ongoing since November of last year. But with the CDC’s travel notice, the ministry sprung into action revisiting mosquito-breeding grounds across the country as part of the campaign. According to Ministry of Health officials, the fight is against the aedes aegypti and aedes albopictus mosquitoes, which transmits zika as well as dengue and Chuikungunya. 

Kim Bautista, Chief of Operations, Vector Control Unit

“We were all thinking along the same lines at the ministry in terms of this isn’t a fight against Zika; it’s basically a fight against the aedes aegypti and aedes albopictus mosquitoes, vectors of these three different diseases. And as such, that was how we developed our preparedness and response plan. And it is what we’ve been trying to sell to the public over the past months. I think we’ve made some very good advancements over the past couple months. We’ve had more interests from other ministries, from private sector, from different entities. Only recently, I think you guys had seen it in the media that we had a workshop with UNICEF where we looked through the child friendly municipality initiatives and we met with the municipalities to develop communication and community engagement plans—specific plans that will fill a gap that we’ve been trying to fill for many years. How do we engage the community?”

Marvin Manzanero

Dr. Marvin Manzanero, Director of Health Services

“We also need to not just only be able to zone into zika, but I think we are forgetting a bigger factor which is the aedes aegypti or the aedes albopictus mosquito. So it is not only zika that we are trying to curtail when we do the activities we do, but it is also dengue, Chik-V and zika that you are trying to minimize if you eliminate the aedes aegypti mosquito.”