The Serious Business Of Dengue Prevention

It’s been a few years since I’ve been involved with the dengue prevention campaign, and you would think with a couple of years, the disease would have been controlled, or even eradicated.

Unfortunately, dengue fever is still prevalent. In fact, the number of dengue cases in Singapore is expected to hit 30,000 this year – higher than the record in 2013 when 22,170 cases were reported. And it’s come with a couple of challenges:

• The Zika virus now making news around the world and akin to dengue fever, Zika is also carried and transmitted by the Aedes mosquito;
• Campaign fatigue among people who are so accustomed to hearing about dengue this and that, that they become blasé about what needs to be done to prevent the disease from causing harm to them and our community.

But here’s the thing about dengue – prevention is, quite practically, in our hands. Essentially, the best way to prevent dengue is to prevent the breeding of its carrier, the Aedes mosquitoes, through the 5-Step Mozzie Wipeout, which can be incorporated into our daily household routine. The steps entail removing stagnant water in our homes, which are ideal breeding grounds for mosquitoes, to break the Aedes mosquito’s breeding cycle. By doing that, we can stop dengue transmissions through the bite of these pesky insects.

They told me the box contains only male mozzies. I think they checked every single one of their little private parts to be sure. #Repost @tryingtoohard with @repostapp. ??? #MozzieWipeout Fear Factor Challenge: @miyagisan trying not to freak out while @mr_brown exclaims on his behalf

A video posted by Benjamin “Mr Miyagi” Lee (@miyagisan) on Feb 28, 2016 at 1:17am PST

This year’s dengue campaign launch repeated previous campaigns’ exhortation to do the Mozzie Wipeout, but this time to consciously do it for 14 days – to effectively break the breeding cycle of the Aedes mosquito. To take effective control of the dengue situation, a penalty for households found to be breeding mosquitoes was also announced.

A few things of interest about the Aedes mosquitoes and dengue:

• Only the female Aedes mosquito bites (because it needs the protein in our blood to develop its eggs).
• The mosquito becomes infective about 7 days after it has bitten a person carrying the virus.
• The mosquito is more prone to biting at dawn and dusk.
• The average lifespan of an Aedes mosquito is two weeks, and during this time, it can lay eggs about three times.
• Eggs can remain dormant in dry conditions for up to 9 months, after which they can still hatch if exposed to favourable conditions, i.e. water and food.

With that in mind, I’m going around the house to check for and remove potential breeding spots – like on our BBQ canvas sheet cover at the balcony, potted plant bases, our (not used often enough) bicycles, which may have tiny nooks where leftover rainwater may accumulate.

We've been hearing about the rising number of #dengue cases. The virus is transmitted only via the female #aedes mosquito. That means if you stop them breeding, you will stop it spreading. So do the #MozzieWipeout – it's easy, and only takes a few minutes. E.g. Check your potted plant holders for stagnant water, tip them out.

A photo posted by Benjamin "Mr Miyagi" Lee (@miyagisan) on Mar 23, 2016 at 9:15pm PDT

The other thing I’m concerned with is that many of us delegate our household chores to our hired help, and dengue prevention tasks like the 5-Step Mozzie Wipeout may be one of the chores that can be overlooked at times. I’m quite keen to make sure that this is done myself even if we have help at home.

For us, dengue prevention is a serious business, as I’ve reminded everyone over the years, our now 7-year-old son had to have two blood transfusions at 8 weeks old due to dengue fever. So he’s going to go around our apartment and do the Mozzie Wipeout with me regularly as well.

It’s no joke – there have been more than 5,900 reported cases of dengue since the beginning of the year. So get on it now, and make the Mozzie Wipeout part of your household routine.