Goidhoo has some unique challenges with mosquito control.  Large fresh water lakes breed huge numbers of mosquitoes and appear to be home only to mosquitoes and none of their predators!  The Goidhoo Council President, Mohamed Amir and Wisham, one of the Community Health Officers  and I  spent some time recently checking out the mosquito populations in one of the lakes, it is truly impressive with what could easily be millions of mosquito larvae, pupae and emerging adult mosquitoes!  We brainstormed various possible short term and long term solutions.

At the same time our team was working with the community to survey the town to locate and eliminate mosquito breeding.  We had fun meeting with the school children from K-5th grade today.  We danced the hokey pokey, talked about mosquitoes and did a “Dengue Destroyers” cheer!   We invited them to join us both for the clean up of the island happening this Saturday and to come back after school to help our team, the Community Health Workers and Council members survey the homes on the  island for mosquito breeding.  Join us they did, we had quite an impressive turn out, including community leaders, community members and children joining us for survey this afternoon, about 70 people!  A good time was had by all and impressive numbers of mosquitoes were eliminated from the Goidhoo community.

20130826_143046