Thousands of fish released into lake to check epidemic

With close to 300,000 people in Karnataka laid down by viral fever Chikungunya, the civic authorities in Bangalore released six thousand fish into Madiwala Lake to eat the larva of mosquitoes causing the epidemic.

The Bangalore City Corporation officials said they had released Guppy and Gambusia fish into Madiwala lake to help prevent the spread of Chikungunya in Bangalore. More than 7,000 people in Bangalore alone are suffering from the disease, whose symptoms include fever, redness in the eyes and joint pain.

Bangalore City Corporation’s Deputy Commissioner of Health Manu Baligar told reporters that their experiment of releasing fish into a lake in Bangalore a couple of years ago had paid off when the incidence of vector-borne diseases showed a marked decline.

Release of fish into the Madiwala Lake was one of the steps the authorities had taken to contain the spread of Chikungunya in Bangalore. The authorities were also cleaning up tanks, wells and small ponds, besides carrying out fogging and spraying activities in areas affected by the epidemic.

Chikungunya is a viral fever caused by an alpha-virus that is spread by bites of aedes aegypti mosquito that breed in stagnant water-bodies. Till late last month, a total of 2,86,201 people in the state had been affected by Chikungunya.

Though the initially Chikungunya was reported from northern Karnataka districts of Gulbarga, Bidar, Gadag and Bellary, it has fast spread across the entire state with thousands of cases being reported from southern Karnataka. Kodagu in southern Karnataka is the only district in the State, which has not been affected by the epidemic.