My son thought we’re living in the clouds but it was actually the fog from the fogging exercise. There has been some serious fogging exercises every week for the past 4 or 5 weeks. This was due to the fact that Dengue fever is spreading and yesterday The Star reported that there have been 6 deaths and 1,008 dengue fever cases have been reported nationwide between July 6 and 12. Selangor had 4 deaths, while Kuala Lumpur and Johor recorded 1 death each. I heard from my mother that there was a fatality in the neighborhood due to the fever. Last week, Health Officers from the Health Ministry came knocking on all doors to check on breeding spots. Luckily, our house don’t have any breeding spots. We heard from the officers that there were quite a number of houses were being fined for breeding Aedes mosquitoes.

Now, fogging is effective to kill mosquitoes but does not kill larvae. Fogging will not stop mosquitoes entering your homes, however, it may deter them from establishing breeding grounds at homes where fogging is performed. So in order to really clear breeding spots, we need to:

• Remove garbage or unnecessary pots, bottles, cans etc from the garden area.
• Use mosquito larvicides or mosquito larvae-eating fish such as guppies in waters that cannot be drained.
• Change water in flower pots once a week and wash them thoroughly. Do not let plants stand in trays containing water. Scrub trays weekly to get rid of any mosquito eggs.
• Cover all water containers and eliminate objects that can trap rainwater.

Should you or your child present with any of the following signs, a doctor should be consulted immediately to confirm diagnosis:

• Abrupt onset of high fever (>39 c or 102 f).
• Headache.
• Pain behind the eyes.
• Muscle & joint pain.
• Rashes.
• Loss of appetite, nausea and vomiting.

I’m tagging Jean Chia to help me come up with more ways to get rid of the mosquitoes and maybe spread the words.

My son doing his own ‘fogging’ exercise