The best thing that you could do to prevent mosquito breeding is to get rid of stagnant water in your home. These mosquitoes do not even need a lot of water. Even just a bucket with a little water at the bottom, a planter that has a bottom water catch, leaky pipes, or a pooling area under your plants is enough for them to breed.

The first recorded outbreak happened in Australia last 1897. A reoccurrence was noted in 1928 during an epidemic in Greece and again, for the third time, in Taiwan last 1931. The initial outbreak in Australia verified the epidemic there. It was not long before it reached other Asian countries including India, Indonesia, Maldives, Myanmar, Sri Lanka, and Thailand, as well as in Singapore, Cambodia, China, Laos, Malaysia, New Caledonia, Palau, Philippines, Tahiti and Vietnam in the Western Pacific Region. Today, Dengue has most definitely come a long way from being a rare symptom on a foreign land to becoming a common house hold killer among locals evident in almost all Asian nations. 

Dengue alert in Queensland’s far north.

Two people in Port Douglas have contracted dengue-fever while two more have fallen ill in the neighboring town of Mossman earlier this month, according to Queensland Health.

Brian Montgomery from the Tropical Population Health Network says that authorities are doing what they can to alleviate the problem. Local councils are now doing yard inspections and are helping in disseminating information that educates people about this mosquito-borne disease. They are also encouraging local residents to be more ware of their surroundings and help get rid of water where said insects could breed.

Source: ABC

Palau’s Bureau of Public Health has alerted the public that there is a continued increase in the number of confirmed cases of dengue fever. This is after conducting several tests starting May of last year (2007). Results state that the number has reached the double-digit category with 16 new cases reported in the first couple of weeks of February 2008 alone.

Information on preventive measures such as cleaning and maintaining yards to eliminate all actual and potential mosquito breeding sites have been disseminated among residents of the famous vacation spot.

The public has also been encouraged to use insect repellant and wearing of clothing that offers maximum body coverage (long sleeves, pants, socks and shoes) when cleaning around the house.

Source: mvariety

It was beetles in Vietnam, but in the Philippines, Dr. Paulyn Jean Ubial, a ranking health official has appealed to people to spare spiders, lizards, frogs and other animals that prey on mosquitoes. This announcement was prior to a warning by the World Health Organization (WHO) about the rising incidence of dengue fever in many parts of Asia and that is including the Philippines.

According to Ubial, that there is a need to preserve these creatures that prey on mosquitoes because they help us control health menaces such as dengue-carrying mosquitoes, especially now that these mosquitoes seem to have built resistance to chemical insecticides. After all, measures such as fogging in areas where dengue is endemic, have been dismal failures in controlling the mosquito population.

Source: PDI

Researchers from The University of Arizona in Tucson have discovered that a particular species of mosquito, the Aedes aegypti (the infamous dengue carrier), has quite a complex metabolic pathway. It requires its members to excrete toxic nitrogen after feasting on human blood. If they do not do this, they also fail to lay eggs which will eventually weaken and kill them.

Neat huh?

The team of researchers composed of leader Roger L. Miesfeld, members Patricia Y. Scaraffia, Guanhong Tan, Jun Isoe, BIO5 member Vicki H. Wysocki, and the late Michael A. Wells will be publishing the results of their study in the January 15 issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The group believes that further development of this project, such as finding a way to keep the mosquitoes from excreting nitrogen, will help eradicate the deadly disease

Source: CCNMag

According to two of the country�s leading epidermiologists who act as advisers to National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, dengue fever could actually cause havoc in the United States - spreading itself widely as mosquitoes that transmit the disease can move into more states. Anthony Fauci and David Morens state in their article in the Journal of the American Medical Association that the potentially deadly virus that usually strikes in the tropics has already struck Hawaii and Texas.

The reason for this is the erratic climate changes caused by global warming. If you�ve noticed, there has been an increase in rainfall and that temperature and humidity changes have also changed dramatically in the recent years.

Water + heat + humidity = happy mosquitoes

And what is scary is that according to the United Nations’ 2007-08 Human Development Report , �these types of weather changes may more than double the number of people exposed to dengue worldwide by 2080. �

Woops! And they say Al Gore was wrong� Tsk!

Source: Indystar