Mosquitoes Still Have Breeding

Dengue Outbreak In Fiji

Mosquitoes Still Have Breeding Grounds Close to Suva

From Our Own Correspondent SUVA, April 21.

T\ENGUE, one of the many mosquito JL/ (aedes aegypti) legacies in the tropics, has steadily grown to epi demic proportions in a large part of Fiji during April.

In the early hot-weather months in Suva there was an almost complete absence of mosquitoes, but in March and April, despite an active and reinforced anti-mosquito campaign, a horde vicious dive-bombing insects descended like a plague. With them, it seems, has come dengue.

The Mosquito Control Officer at Suva has been appealing again to every house holder to prevent the breeding of tne domestic mosouito by eliminating all possible breeding places, but this is a rather heart-breaking business, requiring ceaseless supervision, tact and persuasion.

If the mosquitoes go, of course, dengue will go too, as it is spread only by mosquito bites.

In the meantime an official statement from London reports that the British Government has made another grant of £12,400 to Fiji for the anti-mosquito battle, making a total to date of more than £90,000 spent by the United Kingdom to help keep malaria out of those islands so far free of it.

In view of the close association of Fiji with malarial islands dui-ing and since the war, the Group’s continued immunity is little short of a miracle.

The anti-mosquito campaign in Fiji has embraced the destruction of breeding places (as far as possible); a propaganda campaign among the Fijian people which has met with ready response and help; the oiling of stagnant water and, in places, the reconstruction of existing water channels.

There is an active mosquito team in action but despite its work only the fringes of the problem have yet been successfully tackled It is one thing to harry the mixed population of Suva into a sense of community responsibility, but another to take the next step. For instance, at Walu Bay, right in Suva but outside the Town Board’s boundary, there are innumerable mosquito breeding places. There ,are also ricefields on the outskirts of the town.

Mrs. O. F. Nelson, widow of the well known Samoan merchant who died in 1944, departed recently from Apia for a holiday in New Zealand.

Movements of W. R. Carpenter & Co’s staff during March included the transfer of Mr. H. W. Nolan to Wewak to take up mechanical duties there; the return of Mr. D. L. Meek to the Madang store; and R. Wilson to Lae, as a general store assis tant.