In an intensified campaign to fight dengue, the Department of Science and Technology, with the Department of Education (DepEd), will provide mosquito traps to all classrooms of both public and private schools in areas with high dengue cases in the metro.
“The DOST and DepEd partnership to stop dengue among our schoolchildren will start at the National Capital Region and will proceed to the regions most affected with the disease,” DOST Sec. Mario Montejo announced. “Our priorities will be schools in hotspot areas, communities around the schools, and hotspot barangays.”
Some 34,910 OL trap kits will be distributed to 17,454 classrooms in public and private elementary and secondary schools in Caloocan, Quezon City, Pasay, Valenzuela, Manila, Muntinlupa, and Pasig.
Within the month, DOST and DedEd will extend distribution to schools in Ilocos Sur, Benguet, La Union, and Pangasinan provinces where about 46, 500 OL Trap kits will be distributed in these areas for free.
Meanwhile, DepEd Undersecretary Rizalino Rivera, in a memorandum, instructed NCR school division superintendents to distribute the OL Traps to all schools in their respective divisions and assign students to monitor the traps.
The DOST-developed OL Trap has three important parts: a black container, a small strip of wood (lawanit) for mosquitoes to lay their eggs on, and a larvicide solution. The scent of the larvicide solution attracts female mosquitoes and encourages them to lay eggs on the immersed lawanit strip. Once exposed to the solution, the eggs and hatched larvae will die. The OL Trap prevents the next generation of mosquitoes from reaching adulthood and curbs the Aedes Egypti mosquito population.
The OL Trap is one of the government’s strategies in its multi-pronged approach to fight the dengue menace. Jona M. Bernal, S&T Media Service
