KOLKATA: After being mired in controversies over the last few months, here’s a reason to smile for the Kolkata Municipal Corporation.
Transactions of the Royal Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene, an
Oxford-based British journal, has recognized the civic body’s
contentious move to use speedboats along city’s canals for the purpose
of destruction of mosquito larvae.

Evidently, Atin Ghosh, the
member, mayor-in-council, appeared happy after the news reached him. He
looked confident on Tuesday when he announced that the civic body would
extend the service this year too. “We had been telling that this system
of killing mosquito larvae is proven and scientific. But the opposition
did not believe us. They wanted to laugh at us without going into the
details of the method. Now with the famous international journal recognizing our efforts, we feel encouraged to extend the service to all major canals as part of our fight against dengue
and malaria,” Ghosh said. This year, special emphasis will be given on
plying of speedboats along all major canals to prevent seasonal
vector-borne diseases, Ghosh said.

The British journal in its
March issue had published the special paper sent to it by a team of
civic doctors and researchers including Debasis Biswas, T K Mukherjee,
Baisakhi Biswas, Bithika Mondal and Atanu Banerjee. The paper mentioned
that plying of speedboats along major canals last year had a unique
effect on the mosquito larvae.

“That the waves created by these
speedboats actually kill mosquito larvae has been proved beyond doubt.
We are encouraged by such results and will continue to apply this method
this year,” Debasis Biswas said. T K Mukherjee, the chief municipal
health official, felt that it was a rare honour for a civic body to get
recognition from an international journal. “Though we are a
service-oriented organization, this type of research work will help
build our image,” Mukherjee said.