A different way to fight Dengue: The Dengue Trap

I feel strongly about eradicating those pesky disease spreading mosquitoes. The usual culprit mentioned in Philippine news is the Aedes Aegypti mosquito and the usual preventive measure is to make sure there is no stagnant water lying around in your house where they could breed. Local Baranggays can also be seen to be conducting fumigating missions which unearth other critters like cockroaches.

Well, let me introduce a different way of fighting Dengue which has been propagated by the DOST and even mentioned in Philippine President PNoy's 2012 SONA (State Of the Nation Address). Being touted by the President in his SONA as being able to reduce the number of Dengue cases in Bukidnon last 2011 by 97%, this is indeed something to be used when fighting the deadly disease. The problem however is as with many things about our country, the Philippines, is that most things are slow. I've started searching for this famous Dengue Trap also called OviTrap or OL Trap (Ovicidal Larvicidal Trap) since way back 2010 if memory serves me right. That was back when it was first mentioned in the news and DOST said it would be available for purchase months later. But that didn't come and I wasn't able to find it being sold until just this July 2012 when my mom read in the newspaper that it was available at a store in Quezon City.

So there I was, I called the stores number and yes my call was answered. Introducing Czary Techno Industries. They are mentioned in the DOST page as a supplier for these OL Traps and located below is the story of how I came to buy from them and a whole lot more about this Dengue fighting machine.

OL Trap purchase

Location and contact details:
Czary Techno Industries
unit 203 LRI Bldg., # 21 Congressional Avenue,
Brgy. Bahay Toro, Quezon City (Near Visayas Ave.)
Tel. nos: (02) 921-8978/ (02) 579-9379
Telefax: (02) 921-3074
Mobile: 0916-464-9664


View Wornoutshu map in a larger map

Directions:
1. Get to Congressional Avenue either by riding the LRT up to the Roosevelt station or riding the MRT to the North Avenue station and riding another jeepney to Congressional Avenue. Either way, you should end up here.


View Wornoutshu map in a larger map

2. Walk towards the direction of S&R and when you hit the first corner (aka Abra street) you'll see a jeepney terminal where you can ride a jeepney which will take you to Congressional Avenue cor. Visayas Avenue. You'll have to buy tokens from the folks behind the table though, you can't pay the jeepney driver directly.

3. Before you cross Visayas Avenue, you'll see a aqua blue colored glass building (picture below). Get down  in front of it, walk up to the security guard and mention you're looking for Czary Techno Industries. He'll tell you to proceed up onto room 203 where they're located. As a sidenote, room 203 isn't actually on the 2nd floor of the building but on the third? Confusing I know but the actual 2nd floor lists room numbers 101, 102, etc. Weird...


Here's a look at the LRI building, as you can see, aqua blue glass building :-)

LRI Building. Home of Czary Techno Industries as can be seen from across Congressional Avenue.

Closer look of LRI Building. Some construction work going on beside them

An ad of Czary Techno Industries posted near LRI building

Sorry I didn't have my camera back then hence my pictures are not that good and the watermarks are not what they usually look like (a bit lazy today so didn't fix 'em). Also, pardon me if I didn't take any pictures inside their office, I forgot to with the excitement I felt in finally finding them and with all the discussions I had with their accomodating representative.

The office was a bit small and housed their display area as well as their warehouse since they're just a small company. The staff was very friendly though and was glad to share with me a short video of their product and answer any questions I had. He told me that they were planning to introduce the product to local supermarkets to get it to more Filipinos and even showed me the sample of that product. It looked like the lower half of a 1 ltr mineral water bottle painted black and came with 4 lawanit sticks and 4 Mosquito OL Trap pellets. Although appearing bigger than what they currently sell, he told me that they were the same, the other one just looking more commercial. It wasn't for sale though, only for display. He also mentioned that they are getting a lot of orders, a guy even bought around 1,500 units of their traps to distribute to his Barangay to fight dengue (wow, I wish I had that much to spend or even that guy in our Barangay. hahaha!).
After all that he proceeded to count my purchase of 10 units of traps and 200 units of the OL Trap pellets. They had to manually count those 200 pellets which according to him is quite a headache since pellets come in packs of 5000 per box.

Here's a picture of one unit of OL Trap. It consists of 1 tumbler, 1 lawanit stick, 4 sachets of OL pellets, and instruction manual. Each unit at the time of this writing costs Php 20.

1 unit of OL Trap

Here's a picture of the OL Trap pellets front and back. Each pellet sachet is good for 1 week. More on that later.

OL Trap pellet (Front)

OL Trap pellet (Back)

Take note that they only sell set units of OL Trap and the OL Trap pellets. They don't sell the tumblers or lawanit sticks separately, if you need these you can always improvise for the tumblers and buy the lawanit from your local hardware.

Here's a look at the instructions that come with the OL Trap.

OL Trap instructions

So, let me elaborate on how to use the trap with what I learned from the seller.

1. Take the tumbler and fill it with clean water up to the level, as indicated by a white line above the DOST logo.

OL Trap tumbler. White line indicating water level (about 250 ml)

2. Open 1 sachet of the OL Trap pellets and pour the contents into the tumbler with the water. No need to stir.

OL Trap pellets

3. Insert the lawanit stick, COARSE side UP. Don't put the smooth side up. As explained by the representative, this is where mosquitoes will lay some of their eggs (they prefer the coarse side). Don't worry if the upper side of the stick is dry since it is above the water level.

Lawanit stick (coarse side)

Lawanit stick (smooth side)

Proper placement of lawanit stick (COARSE side UP)

4. Place the prepared OL Trap low on the ground in a place that is dark and unreached by the sun and rain. Make sure too that it can't be reached by any of your children or pets (the representative reassured me that it is safe for pets and humans in the unlikely event that it is consumed and that you only need to drink lots of water in case you do accidentally drink it but do you really want to risk drinking it, worst still if it's already filled with gunk and mosquito larvae?). Also take care not to place it beside other water sources (i.e. places always wet, stagnant water in containers, aquariums? I've heard mosquitoes laid eggs even in running water now though I'm unsure since I've found none in my aquariums) where mosquitoes could lay eggs since this would defeat the purpose of the OL Trap as you'll find out later.

5. After a week, retrieve the trap. Check to see if there are any eggs inside the water. If you find any white substance on the stick itself, those are eggs, with a discarded toothbrush proceed to brush the eggs on the stick so that they drop into the water in the tumbler.

6. Dispose of the water with the eggs inside the tumber by pouring it over concrete or soil. Take care not to pour it down the drain or back to stagnant water as the eggs will still hatch to mosquitoes (the trap does not kill them but only attracts females to lay eggs there). You can also opt to pour hot water into the tumbler to kill the eggs for peace of mind.

7. Proceed to reset the trap with fresh water and a new sachet of OL Trap pellets.

Additional info:

1. The trap has a range of 50 meters. It will attract mosquitoes as long as they are within 50 meters of it.

2. The trap does not kill adult mosquitoes or the eggs they lay in the trap. It only attracts them to lay their eggs there so that you can dispose of them thereby killing off their kind since no new mosquitoes will get born. Consequently, if you neglect to kill the mosquitoes within 1 week and reset the trap, you will only be breeding mosquitoes. And, if you don't dispose of the water with the eggs properly, the same will be true.

3. Each OL Trap pellet sachet is good for 1 week. After which you have to change the old water and pellet solution.

There are different ways to get yourself set up with the OL Trap.
1. You can visit the Czary Techno Industries office in Quezon City (directions above)
2. Visit their outlet at Gate 4 of the DOST compound near SM Bicutan
3. Contact Czary Techno Industries and have them ship it to you via JRS (across their building). Of course you'd have to pay for shipping and they'd ship it only once you've deposited everything including payment for the actual items to their BDO account.

Where's JRS? This is a view of the stores directly across LRI building.

4. Contact the other provider mentioned in the DOST page comments (didn't get a chance to visit this place as it was far from me)

Heritage Veterinary Corporation
By-Pass road, Brgy. Guyong, Sta. Maria, Bulacan
Wireless No.: (02) 781-5034
Telefax No.: (044) 641-0833

Well that's it! I'll just update you on how this worked for me (set it up only last Thursday, July 26, 2012), so far I'm already seeing those mosquito eggs in their so it looks promising. :)

I sure hope that this post has proven useful in your fight against Dengue. If you have any comments/questions, please feel free to let me know via the comment box below or thru email!


Update 1: August 3, 2012

Well after a week of waiting. Here are the results.
1. The water inside the trap turned a yellowish/brownish color. I'm unsure if this is due to the OL Trap pellets or some other debris has gotten into the trap that caused it to go this color (it's been raining hard in manila causing floods and all, the wind is terrible and is blowing all manner of debris).

Yellowish/brownish water with a lot of debris

2. There were bits of undissolved OL trap pellets, some black debris, some white debris (I'd assume these are the mosquito eggs, and some muck. But I didn't see any larvae or as we call them "kiti-kiti" hatch yet.

Debris seen on the bottom with what appears to be mosquito eggs on right side

The sad thing is the number of mosquitoes in our house has increased considerably. Now, I am not sure if this is due to the trap attracting all of the mosquitoes in our vicinity (if this is the case then this is not recommended if you will be the only one in your barangay to use it) or if the rains had somehow caused them to increase in number in all areas, not just our house. In any case, I'll provide an update in the next post. Thanks for reading!