Town mosquitoes easier to kill than their country cousins

Star: What works against Aedes in urban areas does not apply in rural zones.
The Sarawak authorities have found that conventional methods and formulas used to fight the mosquitoes in urban centres have little effect in tackling the dengue scourge in rural areas.
According to Deputy Chief Minister Tan Sri Dr George Chan Hong Nam, this is due to the vast difference in environmental settings and the nature of breeding grounds.
“It is going to be very difficult to control the dengue situation now that it has spread into the rural areas of Sarawak.
“In urban centres, fogging using different kinds of chemicals has been effective in killing mosquitoes, but this method will not work in rural places because the areas involved are too huge for fogging to take effect.
“In jungles, the breeding grounds for these mosquitoes are very vast. They can live and multiply everywhere, from treetops to leaves and crevices in any part of the jungle.
“We will have to devise new strategies to deal with the dengue situation there,” he said yesterday.
Dr Chan, who is state Disaster Relief Committee chairman, was commenting on the recent 260 confirmed dengue cases in rural Sarawak, which included those working in timber camps and oil palm plantations in the jungle interior.
Seven people in the state have died of dengue this year, of which six were from rural communities.
“In the rural settlements, dengue can spread very fast. I need to meet all the relevant authorities on how to stop the spread,” he said.
Dr Chan said the authorities were not ready to tackle dengue in rural zones because all this while, the Aedes menace was mainly an urban problem.