Posted by: venom

If you are living in the tropics, you would know that mosquitoes are one of the worst pests around. Besides giving you itchy stings, mosquitoes also spread diseases like Malaria and Dengue fever. If you are living in an area where mosquitoes are pests, there are a couple of things that you can do to help keep the mosquito problem under control.

Since mosquitoes only breed in stagnant water, make sure that your home compound is free from stagnant water. A few easy checks include clearing any clogged drainage and emptying any stagnant containers. If stagnant water cannot be avoided, drop some detergent or lemon into the water to prevent mosquitoes from breeding. Preventing mosquitoes from breeding in your home compound will directly reduce the problem for you.

You may want to air-condition your rooms (especially bedrooms) to keep the rooms mosquito-free. By air-conditioning your rooms, you do not need to open doors and windows to air the room. This will prevent mosquitoes from entering the rooms. If the problem is severe enough, you may also want to install mosquito netting on the windows of your home to prevent mosquitoes from entering your home.

When you go outdoors for activities like gardening or leisure (especially in the dark when mosquitoes are most active), make sure you wear light-coloured clothes. Since mosquitoes are attracted to dark colours, they will avoid you if you wear light-coloured clothing. Besides the colour of your clothes, you may also want to wear shirts with long sleeves, long pants and closed shoes when you are outdoors. This will reduce open skin where the mosquitoes can settle and sting you.

Try to avoid the use of scents like perfumes and colognes when you go outdoors. Mosquitoes are typically attracted to the scents and will start to swarm around you. When the mosquitoes are all around you, it will be easier for the mosquitoes to find a patch of open skin. Once they do, the mosquitoes will then sting you.

Nowadays mosquito repellents are quite common and it can be useful to help prevent mosquito stings. Apply the mosquito repellent on open skin areas and you would be surprised that mosquitoes actually keep away from you. However, since it is warm in the tropics, you will probably sweat when you are outdoors and the sweat will typically wash away the applied mosquito repellent. As such, it would be helpful to bring the mosquito repellent with you so that you can apply a second layer when you start sweating.

Even after doing all the above and you still cannot stand the problem, you would then need to take more serious action like hiring a good pest control company to come and fog your home compound with insecticide that will kill the mosquitoes. However, fogging is both hazardous to health and is only a temporary measure. Of course, when even fogging fails, you will need to move to colder climate where mosquitoes are not a problem!!!