The prevalence of mosquitoes in the city of Bulawayo has become a cause for concern and the local authority has urged residents to rid their gutters of stagnant water.
The concerns were raised during a full council meeting last week, where Ward 19 councillor, Alderman Clayton Zana encouraged the council’s health department to find alternative measures to eradicate adult mosquitoes.
Alderman Zana said although the health department was doing a commendable job in killing mosquito larvae, adult mosquitoes continued to be a nuisance.
He claimed that most of these mosquitoes come into the city via trucks and buses that will be coming from neighbouring cities and towns hence there is a need to spray them when they enter Bulawayo.
“Where we are right now we are killing the larvae but we still have adult mosquitoes in our communities. The prevalence of adult mosquitoes is a sign that we need to take a new approach to handle the issue of these mosquitoes especially considering that we are in the rainy season,” he said.
“We need to at least spray buses and trucks which come from outside the city because at times they are the ones that bring in adult mosquitoes.”
The City`s Director of the health, Dr Edwin Sibanda, urged residents to clear their gutters of stagnant water, citing that it is in such water bodies that the insects breed.
“Residents must within their households ensure they clean their gutters so that there is no stagnant water. Eradication of stagnant water bodies ensures that there is no breeding of the insect,” urged Dr Sibanda.
“Other major mosquito breeding sites within the city are sewer related, in other words, mosquitoes breed where there are sewer leakages. We, therefore, ensure that whenever our engineering colleagues attend to sewer leakages they eliminate various mosquito breeding cycle by adding chemicals which destroys larvae to the sewer water.”
Dr Sibanda advised that the council had planned on buying a fogging machine that would kill adult mosquitoes but due to financial constraints they have not yet procured it.
“As the council, we had budgeted for a fogging machine which will kill adult mosquitoes. In addition, when they are still at the stage of larvae. We have had the challenge of late of acquiring chemicals and now we are also facing challenges of procuring the fogging machine,” said Dr Sibanda.
