What You Can Do to Prevent Spread of Dengue

Dengue is a disease driven mostly by socioeconomic conditions, including poor drainage, housing and infrastructure and poor solid waste disposal. And so there is a shared responsibility at the individual level, the community level and guided by the Ministry of Health and Wellness. So the Vector Control Chief of Operations shares what can be done.

Kim Bautista

Kim Bautista, Chief of Operations, Vector Control Unit, MOHW

“The peak transmission period for dengue tends to be around July and August, so we are at mid-July at this point. Countrywide we are doing our regular interventions in terms of mosquito control services that we provide, ULV spraying in the public and the inspections that we do at the community level. We expect that within a couple of weeks for things to sort of go back down to normal transmission levels. We started the ULV spraying. It carried throughout the Christmas season all the way up to after the Easter and then we took a break, got our equipment serviced and prepared and then we resumed the spraying operations sometime in late May and that hasn’t really stopped and that will continue until we see a change in terms of the transmission countrywide. So in terms of the day-to-day operations, it entails inspections of people’s yards or their premises looking for containers that have mosquito larvae. So we are doing that. One of the things that we have been trying to promote is working along with the various municipal bodies to engage more in community cleanups. As I mentioned, we’ve done some in the north that have proven successful and that we need to replicate. We want to appeal to the general public to basically take their responsibility as well in terms of keeping the drains flowing in front of their yards, taking a little walk around the yard at least once a week – removing unnecessary containers that are holding water. These are things that will basically reduce the mosquito population and then with the ministry doing its routine activities, its spraying operations, it compliments that and you see results.”