The Chief State Health Inspector, Angel Kunchev, said he was surprised to learn in the final hours of the caretaker government’s terms in office that it had decided to transfer €1.3 million from the Ministry of Health to the Bulgarian Food Safety Agency (BFSA) in order to carry out urgent mosquito-control operations.
Writing on Facebook, he commented: “If the idea is for the BFSA to purchase tonnes of pesticides to be dumped into nature — fine, that is entirely achievable! The effect on mosquitoes will be negligible,” Kunchev wrote.
He also stated: “They do not have the necessary human and technical resources. Let me remind you that this concerns around 1,500 biotopes across the country, covering more than 400,000 decares of land.”
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Kunchev further argued that, if the BFSA had been capable of managing control and treatment on its own premises, Bulgaria would not currently be facing what he described as an unprecedented situation with dozens of zoonotic outbreaks — including anthrax in the Silistra and Razgrad regions, Q fever in Stara Zagora, brucellosis in Blagoevgrad, and avian influenza in Haskovo and Plovdiv.
He reminded that, according to legislation, such treatments may only be carried out by companies with certified managers and operators trained and licensed in pest control services.
“However unpleasant it may be, the window for effective larvicide treatments — which are far more effective and environmentally friendly — has irreversibly passed. And spraying adult mosquitoes (the flying stage, or imago) is like opening an umbrella after the rain,” he added.
In his view, it would be better to save the funds and instead organise a decentralised procedure for each of the 28 Regional Health Inspectorates next year. He noted that expert entomologists are based there and at the National Centre for Infectious and Parasitic Diseases, and that they already have access to data on all biotopes.
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