Malathion Spraying Units Delayed by Rains

Bautista said that the recent rains had delayed the schedule for the spraying of malathion to prevent the mosquitoes from multiplying. And with expanding communities and fourteen units to spread across the country, there’s been a challenge in getting to all the neighborhoods. He says they will get on schedule now that the rains have held up.

 

Kim Bautista, Vector Control Chief, Operations, MoHW

“While you may have maybe just under 200 official communities in the localities in the country. There are many others, well over 200 communities that you’re looking at. And so you basically cannot target all of these communities within a reasonable period of time. So we tend to target the larger urban areas first. For example, Belize City is divided into nine sanitary zones. And we target those zones, we have three vehicles target those zones. Within a typical day, you can only spray. I believe it is a maximum of four to four and a half hours because you cannot apply chemicals in using that milk. During the day, because it will basically evaporate, you cannot apply when it is raining, it will not work. And if you apply a after it has really, it would have to be a minimum of one hour after the rain has passed. You basically have maybe let’s see from about 5am to about 6 to 6. 30 in the morning, and then from about six to about nine o’clock in the evening so it’s a sharp window that you have to go and you’re actually driving about roughly about seven, eight miles per hour. to actually do a proper spray. You could imagine that it’s a slow process and then the amount of communities that you need to cover. So basically like the situation improved late last week on Friday somewhat on Saturday, and then the rain started again yesterday and disrupted schedule because we’re, as a ministry, we have given approval for spring to take place even through the weekends to basically catch up on our schedule which, was previously disrupted by extensive rains. Initially, when we start, we will do two to three consecutive, like morning, evening, or morning, evening, morning. And then after that it’s on a weekly basis.”