Taichung Armed Forces General Hospital

During Taiwan’s hot and rainy summers, eliminating mosquito breeding sites and reducing disease vectors at home are important ways to fight the spread of dengue fever. On August 18, the Taiwan Centers for Disease Control (Taiwan CDC) held a press conference titled “Let’s make a DIY mosquito trap to prevent dengue fever”. Taiwan CDC invited Dr. Tu Wu-chun, an expert from the National Mosquito-Borne Diseases Control Research Center under the National Health Research Institutes (NHRI), and Tu Chun-hsing, principal of Yanping Junior High School in Tainan, to talk about how a mosquito Gravitrap works, its advantages, and ways to make DIY traps at home. The public is encouraged to use Gravitraps to understand vector mosquito activities in their homes and to eliminate breeding sites of mosquitoes that are vectors of diseases like dengue fever and Chikungunya fever.
Dr. Tu Wu-chun said that mosquitoes indoors are mainly found in bathrooms, kitchens, and living rooms. Therefore, small Gravitraps can be placed indoors to understand vector mosquito activities. If the number of mosquitoes caught by the flypaper inside a Gravitrap is excessively high, that’s a warning that the homeowner should pay attention to surrounding containers with standing water and manage them as needed to control indoor mosquito population. During the press conference, Yanping Junior High School Principal Tu Chun-hsing shared his experience and the results of carrying out an NHRI program to deploy Gravitraps on campus. Students from the school’s mosquito-fighting club gave a demonstration of how to make a DIY Gravitrap at the press briefing, which showed that those students, from a young age, learned ways to prevent the spread of the disease and were able to pitch in with disease-fighting efforts.
This year, Taiwan CDC released a music video as part of its prevention campaign for dengue fever. The video featured at the press conference in a live song-and-dance performance by kindergartners. Taiwan CDC says the music video’s easy-to-remember lyrics are designed to teach children the basics of dengue fever prevention, which starts with small steps.
Taiwan CDC says that removing breeding sources is the most fundamental way of preventing and controlling mosquito-borne infectious diseases. During the summer months, the public is advised to clean the home and eliminate breeding sources before leaving on vacation and immediately after heavy rain. The public is urged to reduce the number of water containers, to “patrol, empty, clean, and scrub” their homes, and to deploy Gravitraps to reduce vector mosquitoes. Hospitals and medical institutions are recommended to use the Dengue NS1 rapid test kits when patients show symptoms for dengue fever, so as to facilitate prompt diagnosis and case reporting, as well as timely prevention work by the relevant health agencies. For more information on dengue fever prevention, please visit the Taiwan CDC’s website at https://www.cdc.gov.tw or call the toll-free Communicable Disease Reporting and Consultation Hotline, 1922 (or 0800-001922).