North Delhi Municipal Corporation on Wednesday organised a workshop on vector-borne diseases to sensitise municipal councillors and to create awareness among the masses.
North Mayor Preety Agarwal said that outbreak of vector-borne diseases such as dengue; chikungunya and malaria can be best averted by cooperation of citizens. She said that well-aware citizens can help in containing these diseases by taking simple preventive measures.
“The councillors are more close to citizens than other elected representatives as they interact with them on a daily-basis for fulfilling their basic civic needs. They can play an important role in creating awareness among masses,” she said.
Agarwal further said that the prevention is always better than cure. “The life cycle of Ades-egypti mosquitoes is of about seven-eight days if we break the life cycle in between by just changing the water after cleaning once in a week that would check the breeding of the mosquitoes,” she said. She said ideal temperature for mosquito breeding is 25-30 degree celsius so we need to be more careful about the mosquito breeding.
Additional Commissioner (Health) Pankaj Kumar Singh while addressing the councillor pointed that public participation is must to control the spread of any disease. “We are sensitizing people through advertisements about vector-borne diseases such as dengue, malaria and chikungunya, using several media. He also said that most of the dengue cases have been reported form households and our councillors can help us in preventing mosquito breeding. “The target to fully check the breeding of mosquitoes can be achieved with the help of community participation only,” he said.
On the occasion leader of House Jayender Dabas, Municipal Health officer AK Bansal, Additional Director of National vector borne disease control programme (NVBDCP) Dr Neeraj Dhingra, Joint Director of NVBDCP Dr PK Srivastava and other officials were also present.