How to Protect your Family from Dengue Fever
Learn how to prevent Dengue from happening. Learn simple ways to protect your family from Dengue Fever.
Practice MCQ for PMR PG's and SR
By Dr. Satyasheel Singh Asthana
Dengue Fever is cause by a virus but more important thing is it is transmitted by a mosquito named Aedes. The saying “Prevention is better than cure”, is not just for Covid-19 infection, but for any disease. When its come to Dengue one should remember that it does not have a specific treatment, therefore prevention become paramount.
There are 3 main ways to prevent spread of Dengue vector (mosquito) –
- Prevent mosquito from breeding.
- Prevent Mosquito bites
- Other Mosquito Control Measures
How to Prevent mosquito from breeding inside and outside the house
- Do not allow the water to accumulate inside or outside your home.
- Clean or change your Cooler water weekly.
- Look for other source of water accumulation inside and outside like tyres, tin cans, trash etc.
- If you store water, cover it properly.
How to avoid bite from Dengue mosquito
- Wear Long sleeved shirts and long pants.
- Use Mosquito net while sleeping in night or day time.
- Cover your baby stroller with mosquito net.
- Use screens on window
- Use mosquito repellants.
Subscribe to Blog
What are Mosquito repellant?
Mosquito repellant are products that when applied to body or may be cloth, repel mosquitos. They can be both Synthetic or naturally occurring. Effectiveness of naturally occuring repellants is not known.
- Apply on the skin exposed. No need to apply under clothing.
- Do not use on cut wounds.
- Do not use if your Skin has any problem/lesion/Rash already.
- If using Spray, do not spray directly on face especially in children. First spray on hand, then apply to face.
- Some examples of mosquito repellants:
- DEET
- Picaridin (known as KBR 3023 and icaridin outside the US)
- Oil of lemon eucalyptus (OLE)
- Para-menthane-diol (PMD)
- In children less than 3 years of age avoid products containing oil of lemon eucalyptus (OLE) or para-menthane-diol (PMD)
- What if you use sunscreen also? – Apply Sunscreen first, then apply mosquito repellant.
Treat your clothing and other equipment with 0.5% Permethrin.
- Permethrin both kill and repel the mosquito.
- Equipments like Tents can be treated with same.
- Once treated, its protection lasts for few days.
- Do not apply permethrin directly to your skin for this purpose.
- Protects from mosquito bites
- It should be white to easily detect mosquito.
- Rectangular net is the best pattern.
- No holes or rents.
- The size of the openings should not exceed 0.0475 inch in any diameter.
- There are approximately 145-150 holes in one square inch.
Other Mosquito Control Measures — Read more
Quite useful information