To control Dengue, there’s an order from the prime minister and the High Court to use new medicines. To ensure this, two technical committees were formed by Dhaka North City Corporation (DNCC) and Dhaka South City Corporation (DSCC) to import medicines from China and India but reportedly, DNCC is still using the ineffective repellent.
However, the DNCC claims that they are using new repellent along with old ones. This year, Dengue took the form of an epidemic raising questions about the efficacy of the repellent.
When Dengue cases increased, the court ordered the import of effective repellent and on Aug 25, high court bench of justices Tariq ul Hakim, Md Shohrowardi ordered both city corporations to increase the amount of repellent in the current mixtures until the arrival of new repellents.
Head of DNCC’s mosquito-related committee and ward councillor of ward 11, Abdul Mannan, said: “We are using new and old repellents; we still have 110,000 litres of medicines. Malathion needed to make new medicines has been imported from China.”
'There is no way to increase the dosage, but we are concentrating on destroying larvae'; DNCC technical committee member and professor of entomology of Jahangirnagar University, Kabirul Bashar, said: “We talked to DNCC’s chief procurement official who said an old repellent was still being used.”
The mayor said on Oct 23: 100,000 litre of repellent imported from China had been preserved.
But, he did not say anything regarding the use of old medicines.
A visit to DNCC’s former main office showed that three drums of old repellent were being used for the eradication of mosquitoes at Dhakeshwari.
Several drums containing old repellent were also seen.