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As Zika spreads, Florida town a study in bug-borne illness
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Technology Published in 24-5-2016
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The mosquitoes that spread dengue also carry the Zika virus, which has been linked to serious birth defects and has grown into an epidemic in Central and Latin America though officials expect only small outbreaks in the United States.
Among the lessons local officials learned: the importance of home inspections by mosquito control technicians, media campaigns to "drain and cover" standing water, and changes residents made in their own yards.
Health officials have alerted hospitals to the potential for dengue, but mosquito-borne diseases have rarely worried lifelong Florida residents like Heid.
The 2013 outbreak in Martin County seemed like an anomaly 100 miles north of Miami, in communities with fewer than 15,000 people but it had the Aedes aegypti mosquitoes that transmit dengue and a traveler who brought home the virus two years earlier.
Fogging trucks rumbled down the streets of affected neighborhoods nearly every night for a month, but county employees spent more time four or five hours daily on sweeps targeting all small containers holding water where Aedes aegypti breed.
The biggest offenders: buckets, kiddie pools, recycling bins, convenience-store soda cups, potato chip bags and boats.
Why in particular did it take hold in that location and it doesn't take hold in other locations when you have the same exact circumstance? said Nathan Burkett-Cadena, who studies how mosquitoes transmit viruses at the University of Florida's medical entomology laboratory.
[...] people learned something from the dengue outbreak, said Heid, a 39-year-old office manager who now keeps insect repellent by her front door and in her car and adds a capful of bleach when filling a kiddie pool for her dog to cool off.
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Reference: www.chron.com
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