Islamabad: The Health Department Islamabad is following a strategy composed of two parts to avoid and control dengue fever spread and in the first part of the strategy, it has deputed its teams comprising sanitary inspectors, lady health supervisors and workers to launch a continuous campaign.In the first phase, the health department has asked its teams to carry out indoor and outdoor surveillance against dengue fever and launch a social mobilization campaign to create awareness among the rural population to adopt preventive measures to avoid bite of dengue mosquitoes, ‘aedes aegypti’, the vector that causes dengue fever.Through door-to-door visits, the lady health workers have been asked to motivate community to remain vigilant to stop dengue mosquitoes to flourish or develop from larvae to adult mosquitoes inside homes and around the residences and to remove solid waste properly to avoid breeding of mosquitoes, said District Health Officer Islamabad Dr. Muhammad Najeeb Durrani while talking to ‘The News’ on Tuesday.He said keeping in mind the high transmission season of dengue fever expected to be started in next two months, the health department has planned to hold awareness walks, display banners, distribute pamphlets and motivate school children to follow preventive measures to avoid dengue fever spread.The existing weather conditions can be termed as the most suitable for mosquitoes’ larvae breeding and we are deploying teams at high risk sites to check growth of mosquitoes and possible spread of the disease, he said.He added that for outdoor surveillance, the teams of health department have already started treating unnecessary water accumulations to destroy dengue vector chimerically by adding Temephos granules in stagnant water. For indoor surveillance of dengue vector, the teams are destroying larvae breeding sites mechanically, by hand, said Dr. Durrani.He said for the last two days, the teams of health department have been carrying out filed activities in union councils Koral, Tarlai, Bharakahu, Kirpa, Kuri and Sohan to eliminate possible breeding sites of mosquitoes.The LHWs have been looking for any probable breeding sites inside homes like room coolers having water, old broken furniture, toys, lids, cans, pitchers and saucers, refrigerator trays, flower pots, utensils and all those items that may attract the rainwater or water from other sources, he said.He added the teams of sanitary inspectors, malaria staff and sanitary patrols have been working in the field for outdoor surveillance of dengue vector and destruction of active breeding sites at hot spots including under construction buildings, patwar khanas, union council offices, solid waste dumps, schools, colleges, masajid, madaris, grave yards, abandoned buildings, under construction houses, tyre shops and junkyards etc in the rural areas.The teams have been placing chemical temephos granules in the stagnant water ponds and crevices along nullahs and water streams to break the cycle of dengue vector that is checking larvae from transforming into dengue mosquito, he said. He added the stage is set for the disease to appear but so far there is no infected host, either an infected person or the infected mosquitoes laden with dengue virus that is required to spread the disease.He said the campaign would be a continuous process as per available data with the Health Department Islamabad, dengue fever cases start reporting at hospitals in the end of August and continue to rise till the month of October while the disease shows a gradual fall due to fall in temperature though lasts till second week of December.Dr. Durrani said in the second phase of the strategy, called Hospital Based Surveillance and Response, the same campaign would be transformed into a case to case response with intensive IRS (insecticide residual spray) and fumigation at high risk areas.
from The News International - National http://bit.ly/2ZiZ7Wk
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