Dengue, the biggest pub­lic health chal­lenge in this coun­try since the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, has been dif­fi­cult to man­age in the re­gions of south and cen­tral Trinidad with the high­est num­ber of cas­es.

When the Min­istry of Health con­firmed over the week­end that there had been a fourth death and the num­ber of cas­es had risen to 392, that on­ly added to the pan­ic over the out­break. And, as the num­ber of cas­es in­creas­es, there are more calls for spray­ing to be done.

Re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tions on the front­lines of mos­qui­to erad­i­ca­tion ef­forts have been re­spond­ing to pres­sure from their burgess­es to car­ry out the spray­ing ex­er­cis­es that so many see as the most ef­fec­tive way of get­ting rid of mos­qui­toes. They, in turn, have been pass­ing on the blame to the In­sect Vec­tor Con­trol Di­vi­sion for not hav­ing suf­fi­cient equip­ment and man­pow­er to do spray­ing on the scale de­mand­ed by the pub­lic.

On the oth­er hand, oth­er mea­sures to con­trol the mos­qui­to pop­u­la­tion are be­ing ig­nored, and there is even out­rage in some quar­ters over the fines for house­hold­ers who do not clean up their prop­er­ties and re­move mos­qui­to breed­ing sites. One of the biggest lessons from the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic is the im­por­tance of pro­vid­ing the pub­lic with in­for­ma­tion on pub­lic health is­sues.

So, be­fore any mis­in­for­ma­tion about dengue pre­ven­tion takes hold, the Min­istry of Health should em­bark on a tar­get­ted pub­lic aware­ness cam­paign. That in­cludes ed­u­cat­ing cit­i­zens about chem­i­cal ex­ter­mi­na­tion meth­ods, which can be detri­men­tal to health and the sur­round­ing en­vi­ron­ment.

There is a heavy re­liance on com­mu­ni­ty-wide mos­qui­to con­trol pro­grammes that are sup­posed to im­pact the im­mune, re­pro­duc­tive, or ner­vous sys­tems of mos­qui­toes but may al­so harm oth­er in­sects, in­clud­ing pol­li­na­tors, that are ben­e­fi­cial to the en­vi­ron­ment.

Ground spray­ing is one of the least ef­fec­tive mos­qui­to con­trol tech­niques. That in­cludes the sys­tems wide­ly used here, where ul­tra-low-vol­ume ma­chines are used to spray pes­ti­cides. This doesn’t ex­ter­mi­nate mos­qui­toes com­plete­ly. There is a risk that the mos­qui­toes and lar­vae that are left af­ter these spray­ing ex­er­cis­es de­vel­op re­sis­tance to these chem­i­cals, so stronger, more tox­ic so­lu­tions might be need­ed in the fu­ture.

Mos­qui­to con­trol is more ef­fec­tive at the lar­val stage be­fore the in­sects be­come bit­ing, dis­ease-car­ry­ing adults, so the fo­cus should be on erad­i­cat­ing large num­bers of lar­vae. In the in­ter­est of T&T’s frag­ile en­vi­ron­ment, more em­pha­sis should be placed on ef­fec­tive, non-haz­ardous meth­ods to con­trol mos­qui­toes.

In­stead of all of the hul­la­baloo over the spray­ing that can­not be done, in the re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tions with the high­est num­ber of dengue cas­es, more en­er­gy should go in­to find­ing sim­ple, ef­fec­tive, and en­vi­ron­men­tal­ly safe ways to re­duce mos­qui­to pop­u­la­tions.

Rush­ing in to spray a com­mu­ni­ty af­ter a dengue death or up­surge in cas­es isn’t the best op­tion. In­stead, be more proac­tive about keep­ing mos­qui­toes away be­fore peo­ple start get­ting bit­ten and in­fect­ed. It can be as sim­ple as iden­ti­fy­ing and elim­i­nat­ing all forms of stand­ing wa­ter and clean­ing up stag­nant, garbage-filled drains and wa­ter­cours­es.

Clean­ing up the garbage in­dis­crim­i­nate­ly dumped on road­sides and in emp­ty lots is an­oth­er over­looked but en­vi­ron­men­tal­ly friend­ly way to get rid of mos­qui­toes, with the bonus of elim­i­nat­ing spaces where oth­er dis­ease-car­ry­ing ver­min breed and flour­ish. In­stead of the un­cer­tain­ty of spray­ing, which al­so in­curs sig­nif­i­cant costs, put more ef­fort in­to sim­pler, tried-and-true meth­ods to fight dengue.

De­stroy mos­qui­toes, not the en­vi­ron­ment.