A CORRELATIVE STUDY OF MOSQUITO BREEDING HABITATS IN A RURAL REGION OF WEST BENGAL, INDIA

The fight against mosquito borne diseases is ongoing, and significant amount of research has been done targeting the elimination of these vectors and the consequent diseases. Nevertheless, there is still a long way to go, especially considering the spurt in mosquito borne diseases such as Dengue in the last decade, along with diseases like Chikunguniya, Zika, West-Nile Virus and Malaria which continue to be a major health hazard . In this context, interdisciplinary research has shown a lot of promise. In our work, we aim to find out the seasonal larval concentrations in containers of various types in a rural region of Purba Bardhaman, West Bengal, India and to find the same in various water bodies along with their water parameters. The highlight of this work is the demarcation of zones according to the socioeconomic realities of the area, the constant flux of far-off people with the locals or the lack thereof taken into account, and if the most impoverished zone has higher mean prevalence of mosquito larvae. The results show some clear correlations between many variables, even though some of the water-parameters were found to have no significant correlation with the larval densities.