Mosquitos and Zika virus

For two years while in Grenada I tried to escape Aedes mosquito bites, the mosquito which transmits Dengue fever and the now-devastating Zika virus (and many others).  This mosquito is a day biter, making it especially hard to avoid their bites because wearing long pants and long sleeves in the blazing Caribbean heat is just not practical and jumping in the bath-like beaches (or drowning in sweat from the heat #thingsidontmiss) washes away any insect repellant. Anyways, I remember a few of those darn skeeters biting me right through jeans and me often wishing that Grenada had done more in terms of mosquito control.

During medical school we learned from our Parasitology professor that historically African and Caribbean countries alike would invest in vector (disease transmitting species) control programs during outbreaks of disease, but then when disease burden diminished, the vector control programs were dropped only to allow the mosquitos or tsetse flies or whatever the species was come back again. Then the cycle started again - the disease came back - people died, tourism tanked - and the control programs went back in effect...

Now with the Zika virus "spreading explosively" we are reminded again of the importance of vector control and we are also reminded that infectious disease issues of countries outside of our own country are our problem too in this highly mobile world.  I was perusing what the costs of mosquito control might be and stumbled on this great summary of the importance of vector control published by Dr. Goddard from the state of Mississippi Dept of Health (here) in case anyone is interested.