RCC and Zoomlion wage war on mosquitoes

THE Greater Accra Regional Co-ordinating Council in collaboration with Zoomlion Ghana Limited has begun the fight against mosquitoes in the city, weeks after the Regional Minister, Sheikh I. C. Quaye, declared “Attack on Mosquitoes” in the country.
To this end personnel from the two organisations with expert advice from consultants in the bio-chemical industry started spraying La, a suburb of Accra, last Friday, October 3, 2008.
The Regional Minister said the nation-wide exercise would initially concentrate on densely populated areas and markets, which serve as breeding grounds for mosquitoes.
Sheikh I. C. Quaye expressed the hope that the attack would reduce the swarm of mosquitoes in the city, and thus lower the number of reported malarial cases and resultant deaths in such densely populated areas.
He said research had shown that there were some bio-chemicals not harmful to humans when sprayed into the atmosphere, but could totally wipe out mosquitoes from their breeding grounds.
He said the first phase of the exercise would involve attacking mosquito larvae in gutters and culverts before moving to the spraying of mature mosquitoes.
The minister added that they would also intensify advocacy on the importance of sanitation, which is as important as the exercise itself. He expressed the hope that within a short time they would be able to reduce the mosquito menace in the country.
A technical development specialist for Valent Bio-Sciences, one of the companies consulted for the exercise, Mrs Seleena Benjamin, said they had trained about 30 people from Zoomlion on some basic sciences concerning the amount of the bio-chemicals to be used for spraying.
She said the bio-chemicals could kill not only the mosquitoes but also black flies and noted that most countries in Europe, Asia, and the United States of America had been using those bio-chemicals over the past 20 years with no reported cases of harmful effects on the environment.