Encourage students to take forward '10 Hafte 10 Baje 10 Minute': Kejriwal to school principals

Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal on Monday interacted with principals of government and private schools and asked them to encourage students to take forward the message of the '10 Hafte 10 Baje 10 Minute' campaign. Under the campaign launched on September 1, people are expected to devote 10 minutes at 10 am every Sunday for 10 weeks to ensure that there is no stagnant water in their homes which could allow breeding of mosquitoes. It will conclude in mid-November.

"Dengue and chikungunya make the people of Delhi most unhappy in these two-three months. If we will not teach our children certain things about real life, then it means there is a lapse. As citizens of Delhi, we have to take all the steps so that we can tackle the outbreak of dengue and chikungunya," Kejriwal told the school principals at Thyagraj Stadium here. "In 2015, there were 15,000 cases of dengue in Delhi. In the last three-four years, a lot of efforts have been made and it resulted in a decrease in dengue and chikungunya cases," he said.

"This year, experts had reported that dengue and chikungunya cases may increase and break the previous record. So we designed the '10 Hafte 10 Baje 10 Minute' campaign," he said. The Delhi government has prepared a kit for schoolchildren, which will be made available to them through their schools.

The kits will have stickers. The children will check their houses and put the stickers declaring them dengue-free. "Mosquito eggs take 7 to 10 days to hatch. If we drain the water stored in our houses on the seventh day, then the eggs will not hatch. We have to check our house. It does not take more than 10 minutes to do it," the chief minister said.

"A mosquito does not fly more than 200 meters. This means if you get dengue, then that mosquito was bred either in your house, your neighbour's house or in nearby areas," he said. "If we check our house and tell the neighbour to check his or her house, I guarantee you that no one in your house will get dengue. Most of these mosquitoes breed between September 1 and November 15. So we have to do the checking for 10 weeks," he added.

Kejriwal will on Tuesday interact with schoolchildren via video conferencing about his government's campaign against dengue and chikungunya. The schools have been asked to make arrangements for the interaction as well as for screening a film about the campaign.

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