JEDDAH: The Jeddah municipality has stepped up efforts to halt the spread of dengue fever by offering a door-to-door fumigation service, in addition to the 1,300 floodwater sites it is already targeting.
“Since the increase in mosquitoes brought on by the recent rains we have added this service in addition to regular street fumigation. It will entail having teams visit residential yards and spray plants and trees where insects tend to nest, as well as going indoors to spray pesticides in the bathroom and sewage systems,” Amer Hamzah Asseri of the Biochemistry Department at King Abdulaziz University (KAU) and supervisor of the Municipality Fumigation and Research Program told Arab News while touring Al-Safa district.
Asseri also confirmed fumigation teams have been continuously treating the original floodwater sites on a daily basis and plan to keep doing so until all of them are dry. He added that the municipality fumigation campaign has been in existence for the last five years when the KAU set up the project with the authority. Asseri said fumigation is not the only thing they are responsible for.
“Research is also a big part of what we do, as insects such as flies and mosquitoes can develop immunity to certain pesticides,” he said. “Therefore we have been taking water and insect samples and testing them in our lab to make sure our pesticides are effective.” The fumigation teams are currently using a well-known pesticide that is nontoxic to humans depending on the concentration and size of area being fumigated.
The additional door-to-door service, which began recently in eastern districts such as Al-Samr, Al-Fasaliyah and Al-Safa, is believed to be in response to residents’ complaints a few days earlier about the lack of action from the municipality in treating those areas. A health official confirmed eight cases of dengue fever in Jeddah only two weeks before the revised fumigation campaign started. He also confirmed Health Affairs Department would appoint specialized teams to evaluate the environmental situation and hygiene level in the city in order to create a preventive plan against the spread of the disease and others.
