During the night from Thursday to Friday, the Regional Health Agency carried out a mosquito control operation in a district of Millau after a case of dengue fever was spotted in this sector. If this operation is so localized, there is a reason.
Why treat only one neighborhood during a mosquito control operation? This is a question that many residents of Millau asked themselves after a case of dengue fever was confirmed in the Cité du gant, pushing the ARS to set up a mosquito control operation.
Mosquito control, an exceptional measure
As the Journal de Millau explained this Thursday, June 13, this operation aims to eliminate the adult population of tiger mosquitoes, which can transmit the dengue virus, or in other cases that of chikungunya or the Zika virus.
This exceptional measure is taken by the ARS when a case of “notifiable disease” capable of being spread by the insect is spotted in an area. In this case, the Regional Health Agency can carry out a mosquito control operation if a population of mosquitoes is spotted near the sick person’s place of life.
“Avoid creating resistance to the insecticide”
As part of a mosquito control operation, the insecticide products used are only sprayed on a very localized area, namely within a radius of approximately 150 m around the home of the sick person. This figure also corresponds to the life span of an adult tiger mosquito. As indicated by ARS Occitanie “the adult mosquito moves little from its roost (less than 150 m).”
The second issue is also that of resistance. As indicated by Nicolas Charles, head of the environmental health unit of the ARS in Aveyron, “this type of intervention remains hyper-localized because we do not want to create resistance to products in the tiger mosquito.” A challenge that is all the more important as State services and Regional Health Agencies expect an increase in the risks of spreading this type of disease, while the presence of the tiger mosquito also continues to increase. In France.
