To prevent dengue fever, the Taoyuan Department of Environmental Protection (TYDEP) implements every year dengue fever disinfection at 494 villages and 483 schools in 12 administrative districts in the city. Villages are disinfected once a year, and schools are cleaned during summer break. Village disinfection was completed during April-June, and all schools were cleaned at the end of July. The second disinfection of 2021 took place on August 2 and will be completed in early October. Before village disinfection, the 12 district squadrons of the Environmental Maintenance and Inspection Division (EMID) will notify the district offices to coordinate with village heads of the time, scope, and route of disinfection. The district squadrons and village heads will notify local citizens of the cautions, schedules, and items for cooperation of disinfection. The related information will be disclosed on the EMID portal (https://www.tyemid.gov.tw/DisinfectionPublicity) for citizens to inquire and understand the schedule for disinfection.
According to TYDEP Director-General Dr. Li-Teh Lu, dengue fever is transmitted by vector mosquitoes bred in stagnant water trapped in containers in the environment. Dr. Lu urges citizens to enhance inspection around their homes during the village disinfection to eliminate stagnant water in containers by four steps: patrol, pour, clean, and brush. By doing so, the larvae of vector mosquitoes will have no chance to survive. Dr. Lu encourages citizens to combat dengue fever together with the government.
Last year (2020) locally acquired cases of dengue fever were found in Taoyuan. To prevent dengue fever more accurately, TYDEP started a collaboration with the National Mosquito-Borne Diseases Control Research Center (NMDC), National Health Research Institutes (NHRI), earlier this year (2021) to co-establish the ovitrap monitoring plan and train about 180 trap deployers. So far, a total of 3,470 traps have been deployed in 347 villages across the city since March. When the trap positive rate is over 60% and the total number of eggs of all traps in a village exceeds 500 eggs, the village is considered as a high-risk mosquito gathering site called the “priority village”. Based on the weekly monitoring data, when there is a priority village, EMID personnel will enhance the cleanup of local breeding sources to reduce the risk of vector mosquitoes. If the risk index continues to run high for four weeks, emergency pesticide spray will be implemented to accurately block dengue fever from spreading. Based on the monitoring results in week 29 (July 18-24), as five villages in Guishan District were ranked priority villages for four weeks, TYDEP already activated the emergency pesticide spray on July 27 to disinfect and clean up the breeding sources within 100m radius around the traps in these villages in order to eliminate dengue fever and reduce its incidence.
According to TYDEP Director-General Dr. Li-Teh Lu, the elimination of vector mosquitoes is a long-term combat. Besides the government’s active actions, citizen participation can synergize the effect of dengue fever prevention. TYDEP reiterated that summer is the high season for dengue fever. Citizens should check the surroundings, particularly after typhoons and clean up all containers with stagnant water. Besides preventing vector mosquitoes from breeding, this can effectively block the outbreak of dengue fever. Domestic hygiene and safety require government-civilian collaboration.