Day 5 Kuala Muda

We were told to come to the vector unit at 8am but due to unforeseen circumstances, were made to wait in another room while the guys at the vector unit carried out a meeting. We were placed in a room with many larger-than-life-sized miniature models (which by the way aren’t miniatures) of different types of moisquitoes such as the aedes, anopheles and the culex types. There was also a big and hideous giant model of an aedes aegypti the size of a dog! We also got to look at specimens of mosquitoes at different life cycles (i.e. egg, larvae, pupa aka. jentik-jentik, and finally an adult full-grown mosquito). Once the meeting was over we were given a briefing on what we were going to do for the day, and it’s Aedes Survey! After that we followed the team to nice place for breakfast at about 9.30 a.m.

Once we’ve all eaten and satisfied, we got all ready for our field assignment. We got broken into 2 groups, one was to go to Taman Arked and the other to Kampung Bakar Kabor, places we’ve never heard of having lived in SP for 3 years! We arrive at our respective sites at about 10am kicked off the Aedes Survey for the day. Basically we followed the officers around from house to house (or shop to shop) where they would first introduce themselves to the residents and then tell them the objective of the visit. Having gotten consent, they would then begin inspecting around for potential aedes breeding sites such as areas with stagnant waters (in vases, tyres, plastic bags etc) and toilets. If a risk is recognized then they would throw in some abat granules into the water tanks and etc to help get rid of the jentik jentik so that they would never have a chance to grow into blood-suck parasitic adults. Finally before leaving the place, they would give the residents a word of advice on how to battle the war on dengue. Once we have finished going through all the houses/shops we had a short Q&A session with the officers just before the van returns to pick us up. We then adjourned for lunch at about 12.30p.m.

At 3p.m. we met back at vector unit at Kuala Muda District Health Office where we were given a talk by Mr. Burke, head of the vector dept. This time we had a more intensive Q&A session regarding matters of CDC, investigation of outbreaks, functions of the vector unit, Dengue & Chikungunya (being the problems most faced by the vector unit), larvaciding, as well as the use Guppy fish as biological prevention (as well as many more things we would prefer to share with you all at the coming seminars). This went on until about 5.15p.m. after which we called it a day… Oh the weekends!

Jick