PESHAWAR, Dec 11: Health experts have advised people to use mosquito nets and spray stagnant water pools in their areas with insecticides before the beginning of the mosquitoes breeding season. “People can be protected against malaria with the help of insecticides and mosquito nets,” said an official of the malaria control programme.

Citing WHO’s guidelines, he suggested that insecticides should be sprayed in selected areas because the Environmental Pollution Agency (EPA) had declared them poisonous and pollutant.

If enclosed places were sprayed, they should be left empty for at least 12 hours, said an official.

A doctor at the health directorate said that even the high-risk districts could not be fumigated due to shortage of funds.

According to him, spray was the responsibility of the government to save people from being infected with malaria, but it has yet to devise strategy when the breeding season of mosquitoes is about to begin.

Education of the people is necessary because the government has not provided facilities of early diagnosis and prompt treatment to the affected people in Swabi, Mardan, Malakand, Lakki Marwat, Dera Ismail Khan, etc.

An official at the provincial malaria programme said pumps had been provided by the USAID 35 years ago, which were not functional.

About 800 employees of the malaria control programme had either died or been adjusted in other sections of the health sector, said an official.

The official said that they had sent proposals to the WHO for providing the insecticide-treated mosquito nets to people in the high-risk districts on subsidised rates.

He suggested that the people should sprinkle kerosene oil on garbage centres and pools of stagnant water in their localities to eliminate the breeding sites of mosquitoes.

A WHO’s official said that malaria was the third largest killer in the third world countries and children and pregnant women were the worst sufferers.

He said every district needed laboratory and separate staff to deal with malaria cases.

He said that the health department and international donor organizations should divert more resources for insecticide spray in the quake-hit areas of the province.