Prevention of Dengue Fever

Prevention of Dengue Fever is easy, cheap and better. What is required are some simple measures for –

• Preventing breeding of Aedes mosquitoes
• Protection from Aedes mosquitoes’ bites.

For protection against mosquitoes

• Mosquitoes breed only in water sources such as stagnant water in drains and ditches, room air coolers, broken bottles, old discarded tyres, containers and similar sources.
• Don’t allow water to remain stagnant in and around your house. Fill the ditches. Clean the blocked drains. Empty the room air coolers and flower vases completely atleast once in seven days and let them dry. Dispose off old containers, tins and tyres etc. properly.
• Keep the water tanks and water containers tightly covered so that the mosquitoes can not enter them and start breeding.
• Wherever it is not possible to completely drain the water off from room cooler, water tanks etc., it is advised to put about two tablespoons (30 ml.) of petrol or kerosene oil into them for each 100 litres of water. This will prevent mosquito breeding. Repeat it every week.
• Wherever possible, practicable and affordable, prevent entry of mosquitoes into the house by keeping wire mesh on windows and doors.
• Use mosquito repellent sprays, creams, coils, mats or liquids to drive away/ kill the mosquitoes. Use of googal smoke is a good indigenous method for getting rid of mosquitoes.
• Wear clothes which cover the body as much as possible. This is more relevant in case of children. Nickers and T-shirts are better avoided during the season of Malaria and Dengue fever, i.e., from July to October.
• Don’t turn away spray workers whenever they come to spray your house.It is in your own interest to get the house sprayed.
• Use insecticidal sprays in all areas within the house atleast once a week. Don’t forget to spray behind the photo-frames, curtains, calendars; corners of house, stores.
• Keep the surroundings of your house clean. Don’t litter garbage. Don’t allow wild herbs etc. to grow around your house (atleast in a radius of about 100 metres around your ouse). They act as hiding and resting places for mosquitoes.
• Do inform and take help from your local health centre, panchayat or municipality in case you notice abnormal density of mosquitoes or too many cases of fever are occurring in your area.
• It is good to remember that Aedes mosquitoes bite even during daytime and hence you should take precautions against their bite during day time also.
• If fencing of the doors and windows is not possible due to any reason, spray the entire house daily with pyrethrum solution.
• Dengue fever occurs most frequently in India in the months of July to October because this season provides very suitable conditions for breeding of mosquitoes. Hence all these preventive steps must be taken during the season.
• Lastly, it is advisable to always keep the patient of Dengue fever under a mosquito net in the first 5-6 days of the illness so that mosquitoes don’t have an access to him/her. This will help in reduction in spread of Dengue fever to other persons in the Community.

Few words for general public : –

The public must not pressurize the doctors to hospitalize patients whose illness can be managed at home. The beds should be made available for severe dengue patients instead.

It is a myth that all dengue patients require platelet transfusion. In fact unnecessary transfusion causes more harm and puts the patient at risk of complications. Transfusion must only be done if a person’s platelet count is less than 10,000, and he has active bleeding.

Most dengue cases are preventable and manageable. The risk of complications is in less than 1 per cent of dengue cases and if the public knows warning signals, all deaths from dengue can be avoided.

40% of the world’s population, live in areas where there is a risk of dengue transmission.

The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that 50 to 100 million infections occur yearly, including 500,000 severe  cases and 22,000 deaths annually , mostly among children.