NEWS: Malaria Threat Emerges in Tsunami Zone, page 1

Due to the devastation and heavy rains in Indonesia, the ground is set for the largest mosquito breeding grounds ever to be seen in that country. Beginning Friday, officials plan to go door-to-door with mosquito-killing spray guns to try and curb the looming threat that could cause 100,000 more deaths in the area. This comes at a critical time as malaria season is just beginning and there have already been several confirmed cases.

story.news.yahoo.com
Health officials plan to go door-to-door and tent-to-tent with mosquito-killing spray guns beginning Friday to head off a looming threat that one expert says could kill 100,000 more people around the tsunami disaster zone: malaria.

The devastation and heavy rains are creating conditions for the largest area of mosquito breeding sites Indonesia has ever seen, said the head of the aid group anchoring the anti-malaria campaign on Sumatra island. The pools of salt water created by the Dec. 26 tsunami have been diluted by seasonal rains into a brackish water that mosquitos love.

While the threat of cholera and dysentery outbreaks is diminishing by the day because clean water is increasingly getting to tsunami survivors, the danger of malaria and dengue fever epidemics is increasing, said Richard Allan, director of the Mentor Initiative, a public health group that fights malaria epidemics.

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Well, I guess this is the time to watch for outbreaks. Thankfully dysentry and cholera have been avoided to this point due to aid workers distributing water and purification tablets. Hopefully the new rules for aid workers having to be escorted won't effect the spraying, and let's also hope that the spraying doesn't effect the human population as some of those chemicals can be pretty nasty, and can of course result in mosquitos resistant to the pesticide.

[edit on 13-1-2005 by Banshee]