Mayor of Dhaka North City Corporation (DNCC) Annisul Huq today urged city dwellers to keep clean their houses and destroy all possible stagnant water sources for stopping breeding of aedes mosquitoes.
"City dwellers should be conscious about chikungunya," he told a press conference on "Outbreak of chikungunya and DNCC activities to prevent the disease" at the DNCC here.
Chief Executive Officer of DNCC and Chief Health Officer of the city corporation Brig. Gen. Dr SMM Saleh Ahmed Bhuiyan, among others, were present at the press conference.
Annisul said, "The DNCC has intensified its efforts of killing aedes mosquitoes as it is spreading insecticides after every three days." Alongside the DNCC initiative, community participation is a must for prevention of chikungunya, he added.
"We started awareness campaign including advertisements through electronic and print media, holding rallies, arranging view-exchange meetings and leaflet distribution at the grassroots highlighting the precautionary and different preventive measures against the chikungunya disease," he added.
DNCC allocated Taka 23 crore for the 2017-18 fiscal year to combat mosquito menace and the figure would stand at 30 crore, Annisul added.
Chikungunya is a viral disease which is transmitted to humans by infected mosquitoes. Health experts said symptoms of the disease appear between four and seven days after a person is bitten by any infected mosquito.
Chikungunya is characterized by an abrupt onset of high fever frequently accompanied by joint pain. Other common signs and symptoms of the disease include muscle pain, headache, nausea, fatigue and rash, they said adding the joint pain is often very debilitating, but usually lasts for a few days or may be prolonged to weeks.
Source: BSS