As diseases proliferate, mosquitoes becoming Public Enemy No. 1

As diseases proliferate, mosquitoes becoming Public Enemy No. 1. Source: USA Today, Jan 15 2016.

The Zika virus is causing concerns across Central and South America. There is no vaccine known at this time but it can be deadly for children.

As diseases go, Zika virus was always considered minor league.

It didn’t make people all that sick; most infected people had no symptoms at all. Zika was confined to a relatively narrow belt that ran from equatorial Africa to Asia.

Today, Zika has spread to Central and South America and is linked to an alarming increase in once-rare birth defects in Brazil. Although Zika was first diagnosed in Brazil in May, it’s been linked to more than 3,500 cases of microcephaly, in which infants are born with small heads and immature brain development.

An Aedes albopictus or Asian Tiger Mosquito, spreads dengue fever, the world’s fastest growing mosquito-borne disease. (Photo: AFP/Getty Images)

Yet Brazil isn’t just fighting Zika.

That country is also combating outbreaks caused by dengue and chikungunya viruses, which are known for causing fevers and debilitating joint pain. Dengue can be fatal.

The USA needs to prepare for a similar scenario, in which epidemics of multiple mosquito-borne diseases break out simultaneously, according to Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, who co-wrote a new report in The New England Journal of Medicine.

Read the complete article.

WASHplus Weekly on WASH-Related Diseases

This issue contains recent studies and resources on several WASH-related diseases: cholera, dengue, diarrhea, leptospirosis, neglected tropical diseases, malnutrition, and typhoid. Included are a just-published UNICEF cholera toolkit, an updated review of WASH-related diseases from DfID, typhoid case studies from Bangladesh and Fiji, and other resources. 

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention suggested the topic for this issue, and we welcome other suggestions for topics. Future issues will focus on menstrual hygiene management, innovation, water point mapping, mobile applications, and WASH in schools; more than 100 past issues of the Weekly are archived on the WASHplus website.

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Pakistan, Punjab: dengue danger returns

With warmer weather returning to Punjab, Pakistan’s most populous province, the vector-borne dengue fever virus has also returned, say officials. Six patients have been diagnosed with dengue in 2009 so far, according to Anwar Saeed Mirza, an additional medical superintendent at Services Hospital in Lahore, the Punjab capital. […] Last year [2008], 1,240 cases of dengue were reported in the province. There had also been six deaths.

[…] Dengue fever is spread by the bite of the striped Aedes Aegypti mosquito.

Experts have been urging action to prevent a dengue epidemic in 2009. […] With the first cases of the viral disease already coming in, doctors fear the situation could worsen rapidly. “We need to remind people of the need for safety measures, like ensuring there is no standing water in their homes. The government must also urgently begin a spraying campaign at breeding places,” Faiza Riaz, a family physician, said.

Punjab health secretary Anwar Ahmed Khan has promised the government will undertake measures to tackle dengue and said the spraying of residential areas had been ordered.

Source: IRIN, 29 Mar 2009

Indonesia: Pampanga dengue cases up by 200%

CITY OF SAN FERNANDO – Health officials in Central Luzon recorded a whooping 238 percent increase in dengue cases in the region compared to the same period last year.

(…)  The DOH is calling on local communities to actively participate in environmental sanitation activities like clean up drives.

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The role of septic tanks in the spread of dengue

The implementation of a dengue control programme in Puerto Rico led to the discovery of previously unknown mosquito breeding sites underground. Research published in the March 2008 issue of Medical and Veterinary Entomology showed that large number of mosquitoes (Aedes aegypti), which transmit dengue fever to humans, were found to breed in septic tanks.

R. Barrera, M. Amador, A. Diaz, J. Smith, J. L. Munoz-Jordan, Y. Rosario (2008). Unusual productivity of Aedes aegypti in septic tanks and its implications for dengue control.
Medical and Veterinary Entomology ; vol. 22, no. 1 ; p. 62-69.

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