I REFER to the recent decision by North Dorset District Council (NDDC) to withdraw funding from 2015 onwards for spraying on the banks of the River Stour against the Blandford Fly.

This may have long-term consequences for the public health of residents who live up and down the length of the river.

History shows how mistaken this policy may be.

In the late 1980s, scientists from the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology suggested the use of the naturally occurring bacterium ‘Bacillus thuringiensis israelensis’ (Bti) to counteract the fly.

A naturally occurring bacterium, studies showed that Bti successfully killed larvae with no adverse impact on other river life, including other species of black fly.

In 1991 the first large scale treatment took place, and resulted in the number of people reporting bites reduced to 1/100th of those reporting bites in 1989.

Boots’s medical website ‘webmd’ states that: “North Dorset District Council have said treatment to reduce the number of flies emerging in the spring has reduced Blandford Fly bites reported from 1,400 in 1988 to 17 in 2012.”

This huge and dramatic decrease is reflected by NDDC themselves, on the dorsetforyou website, where it is stated that there have been considerably fewer bite reports from members of the public, than there were in the late 1980s, and this is due to treatment.

NDDC’s decision puts this encouraging and beneficial progress at risk, and threatens the return of those days of painful bites and long-term and persistent infections, which many of us remember only too well.

It is to be hoped that the meeting of the NDDC scrutiny committee on March 12, to which all interested parties are invited, will result in a rethink of this short-sighted policy.

Hugo Mieville,

Liberal Democrat Parilamentary Candidate,

North Dorset