Antidengue cure now popular but where do we buy it?

LA TRINIDAD, Benguet—Efforts of government scientists and health officials to popularize devices that kill dengue-carrying mosquitoes, like the ovicidal and larvicidal trap (OL trap), have been successful. But what do they do when the public starts asking where to buy them?

Nancy Bantog, acting Cordillera director of the Department of Science and Technology (DOST), issued an appeal on Thursday for retailers and manufacturing firms to produce and market these antidengue devices.

Dr. Arnold Inumpa, DOST Benguet director, said the OL traps are being manufactured in Bulacan but how to market these has yet to be threshed out.

He said the agency has received requests for the device, but the DOST’s available stock of OL traps has been reserved for distribution to 41,000 classrooms in Cordillera public elementary and high schools.

The Department of Health said the upland region’s dengue cases have increased from 1,262 patients from January to July 2011 to 1,440 for the same period this year.

Bantog said other antidengue devices also need to be commercialized but have yet to receive interested bidders.

Devices like the OL trap are actually improvements to old, homegrown remedies against mosquitoes, Inumpa said.

The trap is a container painted black because the Aedes aegypti female mosquito, which carries the disease, is drawn to black surfaces where it lays its eggs, he said.

The container has a strip of cloth soaked in a chemical liquid mixture that kills the eggs and mosquito larvae.

Inumpa said the public may use ordinary house materials to set up the trap, but households will need to buy pellets which dissolve in water. A packet of pellets, which can be consumed in a week, costs P1, he said.

In Pangasinan, public interest is high on the mosquito fish, known as tuyong, which has been considered a potential biological agent against Aedes aegypti mosquitoes.

But Inumpa said the mosquito fish consumes ordinary mosquitoes, whose behavior is different from Aedes aegypti. The female of the dengue-causing mosquito lays eggs on stagnant waters, or even droplets of water that have not evaporated, he said.

“The female bites to nourish its eggs while the male does not even bite,” Inumpa said.

Councilor Jesus Canto, former director of the Region 1 Medical Center in Dagupan City, said the Aedis aegypti mosquitoes “do not thrive in dirty canals where the tuyong lives, and may only thrive in gutters, empty tin cans and even in leaves containing a few drops of water. Canto, who chairs the Dagupan City council committee on health and sanitation, said this was the reason the city government has not tapped the tuyong in its antidengue campaign. Reports from Vincent Cabreza, Gabriel Cardinoza and Desiree Caluza, Inquirer Northern Luzon