Now I write a newsletter – complete with a dedicated template – that I publish on the BVI government’s internal mail service via the intranet. I addressed this very issue on one of the past editions.

I will reproduce that particular edition with some pointed links to the classes of products we wholly endorse based on EPA standards, one that we have on the borderline, not for efficacy but for aesthetic reasons, and another class we have long ditched.

Since I cannot afford to delay the requisite epidemiological research and Contact Tracing for her son’s Suspected Dengue until I can verify her claim, I have undertaken to commit eight of my field inspectors to conduct surveillance of all localities that the boy visited during the fourteen day incubation period of the disease. (I always go by the maximum ranges for safety’s sake.)

However, as an added protection, I advised her to utilise a DEET based product that she must apply on the child’s exposed skin for the next week. In three to five days from Friday (November 30), given that his Date of Onset was Monday or Tuesday of this week, he will become infective for aegypti. Fortunately, my inspectors will complete the house to house and spatial surveys within that period of time. This will effectively end with a round of fogging/fumigation using a synthetic pyrethroid, either a ULV (ultra low volume) or an RTU (Ready to Use), of my choice.

Against this backdrop, it is timely that this post of yours has led me to the Clinician’s Guide that confirms, for the umpteenth time, that a combination of DEET (applied to the skin) and a Permethrin based product (applied to clothing with natural fibres) is most efficacious in reducing the Landing Rate of the Aedes aegypti mosquito.

We are in sync man!