WHO provided technical assistance and supporting Malaria Consortium to piloting a project on integrated vector management to assess the effectiveness of various control strategies to prevent the transmission of dengue. The study was conducted in Kampong Cham province, Cambodia and was funded by the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH commissioned by the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) and UK aid from the UK government.
Kampong Cham is one of the high-risk provinces, recording several dengue outbreaks in recent years. Cases can skyrocket, especially during the rainy season, where the environment provides mosquitos with more breeding sites and human movements play a major role in the spread of the disease.
Overcrowding also contributes to increased transmission in the area, and so a larger population is at risk of the Aedes mosquitoes bites and diseases transmitted by them. In 2016, the Western Pacific Regional Office (WPRO) provided technical support to a local project piloted by the Malaria Consortium, which aimed to reduce dengue transmission in this densely-populated province.
Although there is evidence suggesting that the use of guppy fish can be beneficial in dengue vector control, WPRO and the Malaria Consortium conducted a survey to evaluate the efficiency of the initiative. WPRO also supported a community assessment on local dengue practices, which included training for community health workers on behavior change communication and health education. The larval control exercise was also combined with behaviour change communication and health education to the community under integrated vector management.