The risk of contracting dengue fever is at its highest during the summer, so Anding District Office held Dengue Fever Prevention Education and Breeding Site Elimination Day on May 24 and June 5. The goal of this event was raising the district residents’ dengue fever prevention awareness as well as making them more capable of preventing the spread of dengue fever. The village chiefs and residents of the district’s 16 villages, volunteers, and the district office’s Disease Prevention and Breeding Site Elimination Unit all received invitations to the event. A total of 300 people attended this two-day event.
Anding District Chief Liu Shih-Hsiung opened the ceremony by leading everybody to shout the mosquito-borne disease prevention slogan of “search, dump out, clean, scrub, eliminate mosquitoes, and mobilize the community”, signifying that the district was 100% committed to wiping out dengue fever. As for dengue fever prevention education, the first day featured Chen Yu-hua, a nurse at the district’s Public Health Center, and the second session was led by Wang Chin-hsien, a senior specialist at the (Ministry of Health and Welfare’s) Taiwan Centers for Disease Control’s Southern Regional Center. The two experts talked about the properties of breeding sites, important aspects concerning breeding site elimination, dengue fever symptoms, and how to deal with the disease. Local residents benefitted a lot from the two speakers, who shared their professional insight by using humor and practical methods.
Right before the event ended, District Chief Liu once again reached out to everybody, telling the audience the basis of preventing dengue fever is “search, dump out, clean, and scrub”. Only limited results can be expected if people rely entirely on the government to carry out disease prevention, and, therefore, the biggest force in eradicating the disease, so that it doesn’t spread, is the public being aware of proper disease prevention concepts. Liu said he hopes the audience becomes the district’s disease prevention advocates who make disease prevention a part of their daily lives. By working hard, everybody can create a living environment that’s both healthy and wonderful.