As the nation battles the ravaging novel coronavirus pandemic, residents of BOET Estate in Lagos have pulled their resources together to carry out an aggressive fumigation exercise with a view to ridding the entire premises of all forms of viruses, bacteria, rodents and pests.
The Chairman and Secretary General of BOET Estate Association, Engineer J. A. Coker, and Paul Falegon respectively, said that the ravaging pandemic informed the decision to fumigate the estate.
According to them, the fumigation, which lasted two days, was aimed at eliminating rodents, pests and viruses/bacteria from the estate.
“We have all been asked to stay at home. We are not doing anything, so instead of lingering around the estate, we came up with the idea of fumigating the estate to get rid of any form of disease, whether lassa fever or COVID-19, because we want to be on the safe side,”
They men said the residents had, through their joint efforts, successfully installed street lights in every part of the estate and had also bought a big generator that powers the estate when there is power outage.
They further disclosed their plan to install CCTV on every street in the estate to further enhance security.
Mr Tunde Atiba of Adlan Fumigation and Pest Control Services, the company that carried out the fumigation exercise, explained that his team carried out deratisation, fumigation and larviciding of the entire estate.
Atiba defined deratisation as the process of exterminating rat invasion by application of appropriate chemicals. “Because they are vectors, they often carry disease pathogens, which are inimical to human health such as lassa fever, plagues, leptospirosis, rat bite and fever.”
Fumigation on the other hand, he said, was the process of disinfecting or purifying the estate with the fumes of prescribed chemicals, noting that, in the process, pest or any other harmful living organisms were killed to prevent transfer of disease pathogens. Larviciding is the application of chemicals to kill the insects or vectors at the larva life stage.
Atiba explained that the fumigation team adopted the use of eco friendly chemicals, together with modern equipments to perform the exercise.
“There was no dead rat on the streets anywhere,” he said.
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