February 26th 2010 – Dengue Meetings
Friday, February 26, 2010 at 09:01PM This week Otilia and I attended 2 meetings regarding the city’s plans to prevent the arrival of dengue. Dengue is a mosquito born disease that can be troublesome and painful at least and deadly at most. The symptoms start with a fever, headache, and severe body aches followed by vomiting and overall fatigue. If it is ‘hemorrhaging dengue’ you will more than likely die.
And this time of year, the mosquitoes are absolutely horrible. I have had larvae swimming in my pila twice now. For those of you who don’t know yet, a pila is a large water holding receptacle – usually built out of cement. It holds water for use when there is no running water. People do their dishes, laundry and bathing at a pila. Every house has one because water often does not run and it is a normal part of life here …
The first time I noticed the larvae in my pila, I was leaving to take Chon (our Spanish visitor) back to the airport. Idalia said she would empty my pila and scrub it out and refill it while I was gone. People really do take good care of me here!! The second time I noticed the larvae, just this week, I decided to blast the pila with bleach. I was a bit freaked out by the thought of having washed my hair with that water. Uck. I poured about 2 cups of bleach in my pila. That did the trick. Now when water runs, and I can turn on the tap to fill my pila every other morning, I let it over-flow for a couple of minutes. The beginning stages of the larvae float. My logic (actually I think it was Mike’s logic) is that with the overflowing of the pila, the floating larvae would go down the drain. Good thinking. And so far so good. No new larvae this week.
Anyway – Otilia and I attended this meeting. It is good to make appearances to these kinds of things because it shows community involvement by the Pastoral House. I’m all for that. We are, after all, beneficiaries of some of the activities and works that the city does. And dengue prevention could sure benefit us all!
The first meeting on the 23rd was informational: what dengue is: the symptoms, how it is spread, how to prevent, etc. The local doctor presented us with this information. The very same doctor who signed our letter of support that we need to present to the Ministry of Health and the Customs Agents at the airport to be allowed to bring a ton of medicines in for the Newton Medical delegation that comes in March. After this information was presented, he briefly talked about what they were planning to do to prevent the risk here in Berlin. After about two hours we ended with another meeting set to take place today (Friday).
Today’s meeting was more interactive and productive. The attendees of these two meetings were from a variety of institutions: ProVida, the Police, City Hall, Red Cross, the Commandos (EMS people), and a variety of committee people: representatives from the city water committee, environmental committee, civil defense committee, etc.
Today we all put our heads together about how each of us could do our part to combat our mosquito problem. They had a plan … a day to pick up trash, check pilas and then fumigate every house and business in town.
The plan is to use the older high school kids in a day of service picking up trash. They would be provided rubber gloves, large trash bags and drinking water. We needed adult supervisors for this. We are then having a group go door to door to check pilas and homes for stagnant water issues. Then on the day of fumigation, we needed to secure enough fumigating whatchamajiggies, with properly trained people to run them and people to help temporarily evacuate homes for the fumigators and other technical support.
It was good to listen to everybody – when a need for this or that came up, people would speak up and say that their organization could help with this or that. The Pastoral House committed to helping with 100 of the 500 photocopies needed for the survey for 500 households, 100 large trash bags, drinking water and 2 people to help out on fumigation day.
It was a good meeting. And fumigation day is set for this coming Tuesday.
Reader Comments (2)
ooh nice you attended 2 meetings regarding dengue. please tell me ,How can we protect ourselves and our animals at home from the dengue mosquito? What other things can we use or apply other than insect repel lotions and spraying insecticides?
THANKS
dengue mosquito
Good stuff as per usual, thanks. I do hope this kind of thing gets more exposure. plkooz plkooz - Discout Hermes Sale.