Its committee member and environmental health expert Veeramohan Supramaniam said the same approach taken by the government would not yield effective results in the two months it has targeted to bring the number of cases down, until such hotspots were identified.
“They need to identify the ‘real’ hotspots where the wild mosquito population is transmitting the disease away from residential homes after acquiring the infection from people who have the virus circulating in their blood stream before the onset of the disease, which is often mild in such carriers.
“As long as those hotspots are not identified and destroyed, the dengue vector mosquitoes especially the outdoor breeding Stegomyia albopicta (Aedes) mosquitoes will continue to multiply,” he added.
Deputy Prime Minister Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin had announced plans to bring down the number of dengue cases in two months, especially in active areas.
The multi-pronged approach would see increased cooperation between relevant agencies and increased manpower to tackle the matter.
There has been a startling increase of dengue cases over the past few months, 48,845 from January to July 12 this year compared with 14,126 cases for the same period last year.
Veeramohan also recommended local authorities help urban communities by educating and informing residents in identifying outdoor hotspots so that such natural breeding places posing high risks of man-mosquito contact can be cleared in a sustainable manner.
“It is important everyone plays a part but what is most important is to have the tools it takes to tackle the matter,” he said.
“Constant blind fogging will not cut it as local authorities need to do the proper groundwork and identify where and when to deploy the proper resources to address the outbreak.”
Veeramohan added the virus was easily transmitted between urban centres by local visitors, immigrants and tourists from neighbouring countries, which reported high cases of dengue.
“Rural communities or smaller environments are easier to control and contain as transmission is virtually impossible with the low percentage of premises since it is far below the threshold of infection which requires a high degree of man-mosquito contact.
“Therefore, interventions that concentrate on repeated inspections and enforcement activities in residential and other unoccupied premises is a waste of resources,” he added.
Veraamohan also said contrary to popular belief, infected vector mosquitoes in the outdoors do not fly into houses to bite since there are a variety of people and animals outside to keep them supplied with blood proteins.
“It is these intermittent feeding episodes that makes the outdoor breeding vector mosquito such an efficient vector or transmitter of dengue since infected persons carrying the virus in their blood can infect these mosquitoes which later multiply the virus in their bodies before passing it to the next person,” he said.
“This is also the reason why immobile persons confined mostly to the home are not affected by dengue especially those who hardly leave their homes such as infants aged less than a year, the disabled and bedridden as well as older persons above 70 years of age.
“We also observed that the occurrence of single cases per household were far more prevalent than multiple cases per household further strengthening our views that transmission was not occurring indoors.” - The Malay Mail Online
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