The two city corporations are still undecided about the effectiveness of anti-Aedes insecticides even after six months of the dengue outbreak. Dhaka North City Corporation (DNCC) mayor Atiqul Islam yesterday said the sample of insecticide for effective control of Aedes mosquitoes in Dhaka would be brought from abroad within a day or two, while Dhaka South City Corporation (DSCC) said had already tested an insecticide on Friday. This, of course, had a very low success rate, the highest being only 26 per cent.
“We will bring the sample of insecticide ourselves from abroad by tomorrow or the day after,” the DNCC mayor said while addressing a programme in the capital’s Uttara area yesterday.
The DNCC mayor, Atiqul Islam and Deputy Mayor of Kolkata Atin Ghosh, will exchange views over videoconference at 2.30pm today. The videoconference was supposed to be held on Saturday. However, because of some complications at the Kolkata end, it was rescheduled to today, a DNCC official said.
According to sources, it is not confirmed if the DSCC mayor will participate in the videoconference.
Meanwhile, the Anti Corruption Commission (ACC) will scrutinise the Dhaka North City Corporation (DNCC) documents on the mosquito repellents it has been using for the last four years to probe any irregularities or graft during import.
On Friday, the DSCC conducted a test on the efficacy of a newly imported anti-mosquito insecticide sample which had a low mosquito kill rate. The samples of insecticide (Deltametrhrin 2%EW) manufactured by Bayer Corporation were procured from India to test the effectiveness in killing mosquitoes, especially the Aedes Aegypti mosquitoes.
DSCC workers sprayed the insecticide with fogging machines around three nets, set up in front of Nagar Bhaban from a distance of three feet. Each of the nets contained 50 mosquitoes. After half an hour, the tests showed only 22, 26 and 18 per cent of the mosquitoes had died, causing the deaths of 13, 11 and nine mosquitoes.
According to entomologist Prof. Kabirul Bashar of Jahangirnagar University, a success rate of below 80 per cent is not a satisfactory
figure for the insecticides. Moreover, the machines that the city corporations have been using for spraying insecticide may not be suitable for the new insecticide, he noted.
While speaking at a live programme on Saturday, DSCC mayor Mohammad Sayeed Khokon said his office tested the insecticide—the ones currently being used by the city corporations—even on the same day at noon and found that the insecticide killed 85 per cent of the mosquitoes. He said there was no reason to stop spraying the insecticide that has been used for a long time.
In the same programme, DNCC mayor Md Atiqul Islam, however, said his office’s test report showed different results. “I found fault with the insecticide. I have blacklisted that insecticide because I didn’t find it useful. I’ve banned the company,” he said.
Sayeed Khokon said he found the mosquitoes resistant to permethrin, one of the ingredients, accounting for just 0.2 per cent of the insecticide.
A tussle has started between the Local Government Division and the two city corporations over who will import new insecticides to kill mosquitoes.
The High Court (HC) on July 31 summoned LGRD secretary Helal Uddin Ahmed to explain the import of effective insecticides to kill mosquitoes. It also asked the city corporations to import new agents.
Khokon said he acted on the basis of the Health Directorate’s forecast. “We’ve taken up a programme. Our inspection team went from door to door to kill larvae. They visited as many as 33,000 homes,” he said.
“We’ve also announced that we’ll penalise people if we get larvae during our visits,” he said, “but honestly speaking, there have been strong reactions to our announcement. Then we stopped it.”
The two mayors were speaking at Toufique Imrose Khalidi LIVE hosted by the bdnews24.com editor-in-chief at the news publisher’s studio in Dhaka on Saturday evening, which was broadcast on bdnews24.com’s Facebook page and YouTube channel apart from the website.
Earlier, on July 28, during a special meeting organised by the two city civic bodies where top government officials were present, including Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) affairs coordinator Abul Kalam Azad, it was decided that the following medicines will be imported: Malathion 57% EC, Malathion 5% RFU, Deltamethrin+PRO -2% EW and Pirimiphos-Methyl 50% EC.
Of the four new medicines, Thailand’s government has withdrawn two of the medicines as they are harmful to humans and Bangladesh’s Department of Agricultural Extension (DAE) cancelled the registration of one medicine for not being environmentally friendly. The DAE rescinded the registration of Malathion 57% EC in 2007 for the adverse effects it has on the environment.
The city authorities are now confused as to the use of insecticides and what new insecticides they should bring.
Earlier, the ACC took the documents from the DNCC office in Dhaka yesterday after conducting a raid there based on an allegation of graft in their hotline.
During the raid, the graft watchdog learnt that the Institute of Epidemiology Disease Control and Research (IEDCR) has tested repellents brought in to destroy Culex mosquitoes only, based on which the medicines were imported.
According to the documents, for the last four years, a company named The Limit Agro Products Limited has been supplying the repellents. However, from January of this year onwards, another supplier, Nikon Limited, was hired.
The ACC team said that they will scrutinise the documents and submit the report to the commission soon.
Dengue has spread across Bangladesh, with experts apprehending that the situation can deteriorate during the upcoming Eid-ul-Azha holidays when millions of people will travel home from Dhaka, the epicentre of the dengue outbreak.
The Health Directorate said they warned the city corporations in advance. The research centre, ICDDR,B, has said the insecticides being used are no longer effective. They also suggested importing new agents.
DSCC chief stores and purchase officer Md Nuruzzaman told The Independent: “Nothing has been finalised yet.”
“We are conducting tests. It will take some time before we can say for sure which new insecticide is most effective. It will take time to get the final results as a new insecticide has to go through three separate tests,” he said.
“We’ve conducted the field test first. But, the two lab tests—one at the Plant Protection Wing of the Department of Agriculture Extension (DAE) and the other at the Institute of Epidemiology, Disease Control and Research (IEDCR)—are still being processed,” he added.
Earlier, the majority of insecticides used by the two city corporations were found to be ineffective against Aedes Aegypti, the mosquito species responsible for spreading dengue, according to a recent study.
Funded by the US Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), researchers of the ICDDR,B collected Aedes Aegypti and Culex mosquito eggs from different areas of Dhaka, and found that the mosquitoes have developed near complete resistance to some of the insecticides the city corporations have been using for the past 10 years.
The High Court (HC) on Thursday asked the chief health officers of both the city corporations to import effective insecticides by Tuesday, as the spread of dengue has not been contained using the existing ones.
In the worst dengue outbreak in the country’s history, at least 24,804 patients were down with the disease and 18 died nationwide between January 1 and August 4 this year, according to the Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS).
