The Environmental Health Department has embarked on a rain barrel mosquito proofing project to reduce the spread of mosquito-borne diseases on the island, which got underway in Woodford Hill last week.
The project is funded by the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO).
“We are going out in the community to let the persons get an idea of how to go about mosquito-proofing their drums,” Ferdinia Carbon, Acting Chief Environment Health Office said in explaining the project. “It started with a small session on mosquito-borne diseases and then we went into the reason why we are doing the mosquito proofing of the drums and presently we are actually doing the demonstration, so we have a number of community members here learning how to go ahead and mosquito proof their drums.”
According to her, there was a large turnout of Woodford Hill residents who took part in the activity.
“We also invited some plumbers who can see how it is being done, so that they can replicate in the community for the persons who are interested in mosquito-proofing their drums,” she stated.
Carbon explained that Woodford Hill is one of the communities where the Chikungunya outbreak started and, “it’s a community where householders do a lot of water storage, so we started here today and hoping that we can get persons to like the idea and really go and replicate it in their households.”
Meantime; Councillor Bernadette Lawrence from Woodford Hill said the demonstration is a very good one as the village council is embarking on a Zika clean up campaign.
“I think right now this demonstration is a very good thing for us…,” she stated. “It will reduce the population of the mosquitoes and the spreading of the Zika Virus in our village and our country.”
She indicated that the council already did a first clean up recently and is embarking on a follow-up on August 10.
We lived 6 years in Calibishie. In our experience, most Dominicans (not us expats) ignored the program.
Some stupidly questioned whether mosquitoes are disease vectors.