A health department worker, along with Health Minister Dinesh Gundu Rao, set up an ovitrap in Gopalpura in Bengaluru on Monday.
Credit: DH photo
Bengaluru: The state health department and the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) on Monday launched a pilot study to control mosquito breeding by installing 120 ovitraps, or mosquito traps, in Gopalpura near Majestic.
These ovitraps are fixed in 25-foot distances to control the spread of dengue, Zika virus and malaria in the area. New ovitraps will replace the ones installed on Monday after four weeks, as a part of the department’s two-month study. The pot-shaped ovitraps or bio ecotraps will be filled with water and a pesticide named Pyriproxyfen that will attract Aedes mosquitoes to lay their eggs and then kill both the adult mosquitoes and the eggs.
Launching the study, health minister Dinesh Gundu Rao said that this is following the model implemented at Dharavi in Mumbai. “If this pilot study yields good results, we will implement this everywhere in the city because it is very important to control the spread of mosquitoes since it affects especially poor and working class people who live in highly dense areas,” he said.
The Bangalore Medical College and Research Institute (BMCRI) and M S Ramaiah Medical College will also be part of the study. The study will also reveal the density of mosquito breeding in the area.