Vector Control

Ever since the public first started talking about the Zika virus, people have begun to pay attention to something that those of us in the arthropod control and management industry have been watching for years.

An underutilized way to help control vector-borne diseases is to manage the vectors.

Aedes aegypti:
You may or may not do mosquito work, but you probably get mosquito questions from your customers. Many people tend to group all insects as pests and -- since you are who they think of for pest control -- you are apt to get the questions.  Yet mosquito work remains a very small part of most PMPs overall business mix. In a supplement to the magazine, PCT reported that while nearly half of all pest management firms do mosquito work, for 45% of them the total revenue earned is under $5,000.

So it pays to learn a little bit about this insect that is known as the world's most dangerous animal. Mosquito management has been in the news a lot recently, particularly controlling the Ae. ae. mosquito, which is known to carry dengue, chikungunya, yellow fever, and the Zika virus.

ESA's Executive Director C. David Gammel discusses the
importance of vector control during a March 2016
 Aedes aegypti control summit in Brazil.

Too often the topic focuses on disease management and prevention. While this is an important aspect of the discussion, it does put us in a position of chasing symptoms. It is imperative that vector control becomes an increasingly large part of the search for solutions. In March 2016, ESA co-hosted a summit on controlling the Ae. ae. mosquito in the Americas. In the outcome statement, the attendees call for three actions that will help to turn the tide against the mosquito:

1. Ensuring that those most affected by the mosquito receive accurate scientific knowledge on ways that they can help to control the insect.
2. Funding the research needed to develop better tools and techniques for vector control.
3. The vector control community must organize and speak in a unified way for us to speak locally and globally on the critical importance of vector control research and implementation. 

Relatedly:

• USAID is funding $30 million in grants to fight the Zika virus, much of it going toward control and surveillance tactics.
• The US Department of Health and Human Services recently shifted $81 million from other priorities to focus on Zika.
• A spokesman for the American Mosquito Control Association is calling for a national initiative to make mosquito breeding socially unacceptable.

Ticks:

Image courtesy of CDC

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has a ton of great resources on their site about ticks, tick-borne disease, prevention, and --of course-- Lyme disease. (Side note: It is properly called Lyme disease, not "Lyme's disease" and it is named after the town in Connecticut (you guessed it -- Lyme, Connecticut) where the disease was first described in the 1970's). Research shows that Lyme is spreading southward. The blacklegged tick (Ixodes scapularis), which is responsible for most cases of the disease, is now found in almost half of all counties in the United States. And while research has been promising for learning more about the tick, we still have a long ways to go. For now, prevention remains the number 1 tool for reducing Lyme. For more information on the latest research, see this link from EntomologyToday that discusses an Integrated Tick Management Symposium held by ESA, CDC, and the IPM Institute (May 2016).