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New anti-mosquito drive kicks off

DCC replaces adulticide with larvaecide

Staff Correspondent
The Dhaka City Corporation (DCC) has launched a fresh mosquito control drive by replacing adulticide with larvaecide that will combat the menace 10 times more effectively and also slash the cost to about onetenth, DCC sources said.
"Fogging adulticide was a wrong concept and a waste of public funds. It must not continue as part of a routine mosquito control programme since it is much more costly but not so effective," said Colonel Dr Md Azizul Huq, chief health officer of DCC.
Use of larvaecide as in the drive launched last month would cost only Tk 1.92 crore to contain mosquito population per year while the cost would be Tk 18.61 crore a year if
only adulticide is used for the same purpose.
Azizul Huq told The Daily Star yesterday, "Fogging hardly kills adult mosquitoes and it is proven that the technique has never been able to do any substantial damage to mosquito population. In fact, fogging influences change of location of mosquitoes and that too, temporarily."
He went on, "We will not use adulticide for open air spraying any more unless it is necessary for emergency purposes," he said.
The strategy of controlling mosquito menace should be to destroy mosquito eggs, which can neither fly away nor protect themselves from the toxic effects of larvaecide. It is a proven effective technique which
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must continue, the DCC's new chief health officer explained.
Azizul, who is on deputation from the Army Medical Corps, said the expenditures on the purchase of adulticide and the fogging machines were simply a waste of public money.
"I believe continued spraying of larvaecide in the city areas can considerably contain growth of mosquito population, and it is much cheaper and 10 times more effective than the previously used adulticide," he said.
On the price of adulticide, Azizul said, "My predecessors had purchased adulticide at a rate as high as Tk 384 a litre whereas we recently found the same insecticide available at Tk 282 a litre. Each time the DCC buys at least 55,000 litres; so you can imagine how much public funds we wasted earlier."
He also pointed out that it takes at least five months' preparations to buy such a huge quantity of adulticide (55,000 litres) and the stock hardly lasts four to five weeks.
The DCC has enough stock of larvaecide for the rest of the year. Besides, it has purchased 5,800 litres of Malaria oil B and 585 litres of Anvil for aerial spraying in case of emergency, DCC sources mentioned.