What is Vector Control? What steps are the BVI’s taking to prepare for Dengue Fever?

What is Vector Control? 

Vectors are insects and other pests that have the ability to carry and transmit infectious diseases, physically on their bodies or otherwise upon infection.

Vector Control is the banner by which Environmental Health professionals who are in the business of protecting human populations from the incidence of disease go about mitigating the proliferation of these vectors.

One of the main insects of concern to us in the Caribbean is the Aedes aegypti mosquito, the vector of Dengue Fever, Dengue Hemorrhagic Fever (DHF) and Dengue Shock Syndrome (DSS); and Yellow Fever.  (There is another “emerging” disease spread by aegypti that I will address separately.)  Another insect we worry about is the Anopheles mosquito, which is responsible for spreading Malaria.

Rats are pests or vermin that transmit Leptospirosis, for instance, and which were implicated with the flea in the decimation of two-thirds of Europe by way of the Black Plague between the fourteenth and the eighteenth centuries.

What steps are the BVI’s taking to prepare for an outbreak of Dengue Fever?

The BVI Vector Control Unit is engaged daily, year-round, in the inspection of all private premises and public places in the country.  This is primarily to identify and destroy all mosquito breeding places before the adults emerge from the water.

The field inspectors go from house to house in order to make themselves available to householders and homeowners.  They offer on-the-spot advice and encourage them to employ the acceptable physical and biological methods that serve to prevent mosquitoes from breeding on their premises.

When there is excessive rainfall and flooding, the VC Unit will also conduct fogging (the spraying of entire communities with a “smoke”) to knock down the adult mosquitoes only.  The overwhelming numbers of adult mosquitoes that emerge from receptacles of rain and stored water after storms can only be killed by fogging.

There is another approach we call Integrated Pest Management or IPM.  We conduct community outreach programmes to empower our people to maintain their premises and their communities as a whole in a sanitary condition.  This means keeping the environment free of open containers of potable water, defective waste disposal systems, garbage, refuse, junk and overgrown vegetation that together provide breeding foci and harbourage for the insect pests.  The rationale is that the greater the density of these pests, the better the chances will be for the viruses (Dengue and Malaria) and bacteria (Leptospirosis) to spread among the population.

The Vector Control Unit takes every opportunity that becomes available to conduct lectures and demonstrations to private and public schools, organisations and groups.

The mass media is also a welcome vehicle in publicising the initiatives employed that might otherwise go unnoticed by the population at large.

Printed literature detailing the Do’s of safe pest control is handed out periodically to residents in areas deemed to be at risk for a heavy infestation of mosquitoes and the transmission of Dengue.