Beauty and the Pest: Flowers kill Aedes

An expert says the changing urban landscape requires a refining of dengue-control methods.

PETALING JAYA: One of the most effective ways of combating dengue is to beautify the environment with flowering plants, according an environmental health expert.

Veeramohan Supramaniam, a spokesman for the Malaysian Association of Environmental Health (MAEH), said mosquitoes would often become sluggish upon feeding on nectar, making them easy prey to bigger insects, spiders, frogs and lizards.

We have to re-establish these creatures in the urban landscape with flowering decorative plants rather than palm trees and cactii that dont flower, he told FMT in a recent interview.

He said the relevant authorities are moving towards such a change.

Veeramohan, through MAEH, has been conducting field research and epidemiological studies to learn more about the dengue threat and is engaged in advising the authorities on ways to refine the existing prevention programme, which is based on World Health Organization (WHO) guidelines.

He said the WHO guidelines focused on outbreaks at residential units. He acknowledged that programmes based on those guidelines had helped contain the dengue menace, but only to some extent.

With the changing urban landscape of Malaysia, he said, the old paradigm has to be questioned and re-tested and a method taking account of new research and data should be applied.

Pioneer methods

He said a dengue outbreak was something totally preventable.

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Beauty and the Pest: Flowers kill Aedes