Blood Sucking Machchars are Pehalwans of Evening Skies

Hyderabad: Around Rs.1.25 crore. This is the amount that Hyderabad spends every day as tens of lakhs of families struggle to keep mosquitoes away from their homes. This amount does not include medical expenses when a person catches either malaria, dengue, or chikungunya diseases, that is spread by the mosquitoes.

People of Hyderabad spend between Rs.300 crore and Rs.450 crore a year on repellents, coils, and other mosquito fighting paraphernalia at a conservative estimate. This is a staggering out-of-pocket investment for the people, yet the vector problem persists, according to Dr B. Reddya Naik, senior professor and the head of zoology department at Osmania University.

Incidentally, the amount the GHMC has set aside for combating mosquito menace in the city for the year is `32 crore, according to corporation officials.

Dr Naik, is one of the members of a technical committee that the GHMC set up on Monday, to find way to combat the mosquito menace in the city. He was also the subject expert who this past Saturday gave a presentation at a training programme on ‘Emerging Vector-Borne Diseases and Preventive Strategies’ to top GHMC officials this past Saturday.

The mosquito situation is quite grim in Hyderabad and the GHMC, according to its officials, had last done an estimate of mosquito populations some two years ago. Previous ‘sweeps’ using insect catching nets to estimate how many mosquitoes are there in a given area even netted a whopping 21,524 mosquitoes. This was in Kapra circle in 2017, but the situation could be as bad now, or even worse if increasing complaints from citizens are anything to go by.

Two years ago, the GHMC had said that it identified a mind-boggling 27,000 mosquito breeding sites in the city, a number that has likely gone up several fold with increasing construction activity that also results in stagnant water pools adding to the breeding sites.

“We first have to understand the mosquito behaviour, its lifecycle. The best option is to attack them when they are at the larval stage, as every mosquito that emerges from a larva, is capable to laying a thousand eggs. That is one thousand more mosquitoes for every larva that survives,” Prof. Naik told Deccan Chronicle.

Even when going all out at them, mosquitoes like the dengue-spreading Aedes aegypti, have an evolutionary trick that is hard to beat. Their eggs can survive dessication when a pool of water dries up and can take life again once water begins accumulating at the spot where the eggs were laid, he said.

Asked if regular fogging could not help control the menace, Prof. Naik said linear and irregular fogging along individual streets was of little to no use. “If fogging has to succeed, it should be circular fogging: Start on the outside and keep going in,” he said. Otherwise, the mosquitoes just fly away to areas with clearer air, only to return to fogged areas once the vapours dissipate.

The strategies adopted by the GHMC so far also include door-to-door surveys, which Prof. Naik described as “humbug.” There are some 2.96 million properties in the city, and the GHMC has around 2,500 outsourced staff to battle mosquitoes. Just imagine how long this will take even if one person surveys 1,000 houses and other properties each day, he said.

“Chasing mosquitoes from house to house across millions of properties is an operational impossibility,” he said.

The solution is to take smart steps, first to identify mosquito breeding areas, and use satellite imagery that can provide up to 30 cm resolution. This will help in precise biological potential assessment based on organic load detection, and then teams can be directed to verified threats, he said.

“It is good that the GHMC has taken this issue seriously. But for any effort to succeed, citizen participation is vital. People can do citizen science, identify mosquito breeding sites, swarming cites and alert the GHMC which can then take suitable action. But unless our attitude changes to embrace easily available scientific methods, tackling the mosquito menace might not be easy,” Prof. Naik explained.

Tech Panel to Curb Mosquito Menace in City

The GHMC which has woken up to the increasing mosquito problem in the city, on Monday appointed a technical committee to find effective and implementable ways to control the mosquito menace in the city.

The committee, to be headed by GHMC additional commissioner (health) Dr Priyanka Ala, has as its members Dr B. Reddya Naik senior professor and head of the zoology department at Osmania University, Dr C. Narender Reddy, head of entomology department at Prof. Jayashankar Telangana Agriculture University, and Dr K. Padmaja, additional director and chief medical officer health at the GHMC among others.

“GHMC commissioner R.V Karnan is very serious about tackling the mosquito problem in the city and last week’s meeting and the committee are indicative of the seriousness with which we are approaching this problem,” Dr Padmaja said.

The GHMC has created an app for its staff where daily anti-mosquito activities are logged. The protocol is that if more than five cases of mosquito-borne diseases are reported from one area, then the respective deputy commissioner must visit the area, and a fever survey must be done in 150 households in the area and steps taken to control mosquito numbers, a GHMC official said.

Musi forms biggest mosquito breeding centres

The river Musi, by all accounts, forms one of the biggest mosquito breeding centres in the city, stretching over 50 km through Hyderabad. That the mosquito problem along the river is intense was brought to the fore recently when LB Nagar MLA Devireddy Sudheer Reddy wore a specially stitched mosquito net suit to speak about the problem.

Though flowing waters in a river are not supposed to breed mosquitoes, since Musi has several bends and has many spots where the water is still, is an ideal breeding ground for the insects. Mosquitoes have been found flying 1.5 km from their breeding locations and up to even nearly five km, making an entire swath of the city by the Musi prone to mosquito problems.

Making matters worse is the adaption of what were formerly fresh water breeding Anopheles mosquitoes that cause malaria, which have now adapted to breeding in highly polluted waters according to Dr B. Reddya Naik senior professor and head of the zoology department at Osmania University.

A 2025 study by the Department of Zoology, of the Babu Jagjivan Ram Government Degree college, found that the mosquito population in Hyderabad is dominated by Aedes (50.0 per cent) and Culex (41.1 per cent) species, with Anopheles making up a much smaller percentage (8.9%). While Anopheles is the primary vector for malaria, Aedes causes dengue and chikungunya, while Culex is the carrier of filariasis and Japanese encephalitis diseases.