Dear Editor,

The mosquito population is sustained by blood from animals — humans included. The bulk of this blood comes from domestic and wild animals. In Jamaica the combined population of animals, including cattle, goats, sheep, pigs, horses, donkeys, mules, dogs, cats, rabbits, rodents, lizards, birds, and others, amount to many times more than the number of people, and offer far more opportunities for mosquitoes to feed. Why don’t we organise to have a synchronised treatment exercise of all or as many as possible of our domestic animals with an external parasite treatment that is fatal to mosquitoes and that has a long enough residual effect, so that these animals, which freely provide the bulk of the mosquito’s food for reproduction, will become ‘roaming mosquito destroyers’ and decimate the mosquito population?

This is something that I have done on a small scale and it works.

Treatment of animals for parasites is already a standard practice in animal husbandry but is not routinely done by most farmers and owners of animals in Jamaica. Here is an opportunity for some serious collaboration between the Ministry of Health and the Ministry of Industry, Commerce, Agriculture and Fisheries. The Ministry of Agriculture has experts who could recommend an effective treatment, and has a Rural Agricultural Development Authority team in every parish with technical skills and knowledge in animal husbandry, and as such can manage and implement the project. The Ministry of Health also has technical staff and hundreds of other personnel already on the ground involved in the vector control programme. This project could also be designed to be implemented by a separate team, but both ministries should make this a joint project as much as possible.

Given the international significance that a project like this could have for mosquito control, and control of other harmful insects like ticks and flies, I have no doubt it can get international support in funding for material, expertise, and other requirements.

During the implementation of this project every effort should be made to encourage persons to protect themselves from mosquitoes by meshing their houses, covering under mosquito mesh while sleeping, and using mosquito repellents. Animals used as pets should be treated with mosquito repellents, rather than the treatment used for the other animals — for obvious reasons. With mosquitoes being denied of food by repellents and other protection, or killed at the source of their food, for the length of two generations, this new measure, could be the silver bullet we need to deal with this dangerous and costly problem.

This new measure combined with the measures now being used by the Ministry of Health, should be far more effective in reducing the mosquito population, reducing the health care cost of mosquito-wborne illnesses, and save a large number of lives.

A pilot programme should be done, preferably in my parish of Trelawny.

Hopefully these ideas may be useful in our search for solutions to one more of our many problems.

Winston Foster

irieproducers@hotmail.com