New Mosquito Website Abuzz
HSPH has launched a new website at www.hsph.harvard.edu/mosquito to provide information about mosquito-borne viruses such as West Nile and Eastern Equine encephalitis. The site is based largely on research done in the Department of Immunology and Infectious Diseases and at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Mosquito-borne viruses, or arboviruses, have created a lot of attention lately, spurred by a cluster of deaths from West Nile encephalitis last year in New York. The CDC has allocated more than $2 million to contain the West Nile virus and the US Secretary of Health and Human Services has hired a coordinator specifically to manage control of the pathogen.
Many
state Departments of Health have announced plans to increase efforts to
survey arboviruses. Massachusetts is adding mosquito surveillance sites
to its regular traps statewide and initiating a non-toxic bacterial larvacide
program that will help kill the mosquitoes before they mature. They also
will track bird populations to detect infection.
The state of New York also plans to use larvacide and has added fish
that eat mosquito larvae to its water treatment facilities. Canada
is lining its border with chicken coops to see if any of the birds
fall prey to the West Nile virus. The birds' illness could alert Canadian
officials to the presence of the disease, which has yet to be found in
that country.
