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Aedes Mosquito Larva in the Hospital: A Note From Thailand

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 September 2016

Viroj Wiwanitkit*
Affiliation:
Chulalongkorn, University Bangkok, Bankok, Thailand.
*
Address correspondence to Professor Viroj Wiwanitkit, MD, Department of Laboratory Medicine, Faculty of Medicine, Chulalongkorn, University Bangkok, Bankok, Thailand 10330 (wviroj@yahoo.com).
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Abstract

Type
Letters to the Editor
Copyright
© 2016 by The Society for Healthcare Epidemiology of America. All rights reserved 

To the Editor—Mosquito-borne infections are increasingly important. To control mosquito-borne infections, mosquito control is needed. The Aedes mosquito is an important vector for many diseases including the Zika virus and dengue fever. The survey of Aedes mosquito larva is a routine public health practice in tropical countries.Reference Benelli and Mehlhorn 1 Mosquito larvae can be found in many urban buildings. Hospitals can also be the setting of habitat for the Aedes mosquito, but this fact is mentioned infrequently. Here, I report and discuss the data from an Aedes mosquito larva survey in hospitals in an endemic area of Thailand (western region, 7 provinces) during the rainy season, May–June 2015. Overall, 30 hospitals were surveyed, and Aedes mosquito vector larva were detected in 16 hospitals (53.3%). The percentage of water-holding containers infested with larvae ranged from 0 to 30. The number of larvae-positive containers per 100 containers inspected at hospitals, the Breteaux index, ranged from 0 to 20.59. Based on these data, many hospitals can be considered the source for Aedes-borne infectious disease. Indeed, an important role of the medical center is to provide health care to and promote health within the community. Mosquito control in the hospital is usually a forgotten issue, but it can pose a significant problem if there is a healthcare-associated outbreak of mosquito-borne infection in the region. In the era of emerging and remerging mosquito-borne infections (eg, Zika virus infection, dengue and others), mosquito control in the hospital is necessaryReference Wiwanitkit 2 and represents an emerging and important issue in the field of infection control and hospital epidemiology.

References

REFERENCES

1. Benelli, G, Mehlhorn, H. Declining malaria, rising of dengue and Zika virus: insights for mosquito vector control. Parasitol Res 2016;115:17471754.Google Scholar
2. Wiwanitkit, V. Zika virus infection: control and prevention. J Chin Med Assoc 2016;79:409.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed