Steve Halasey, CLP.

Steve Halasey, CLP.

When it comes to matters of public health, it’s sometimes difficult to know whether the measures that authorities put in place represent a step forward or a step back. As an example, take a few recent announcements about the spread of the Zika virus into the continental United States, beginning with several neighborhoods in Miami.

According to a late September telebriefing led by Tom Frieden, MD, MPH, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, “The actions by Florida doctors, epidemiologists, public health experts, and mosquito control specialists interrupted the spread of Zika in the Wynwood community, preventing further spread of the virus and protecting the community, most importantly, pregnant women.”1 Frieden detailed several significant challenges that Florida authorities faced and how they overcame them:

  • The Aedes aegypti mosquito is really, really hard to control. Once an outbreak with it has started, that’s extraordinarily difficult to control.
  • To continuously eliminate standing water, particularly in places where it rains a lot, is nearly impossible.
  • Despite extensive ground-based efforts, there remained large numbers of mosquitos, and Zika continued to spread among people in the area. As soon as aerial spraying was done, mosquito populations plummeted and monitoring found no more people infected in the weeks after the aerial application.

As encouraging as those developments sounded, however, they were apparently short-lived. Before the end of October, CDC issued new health advisories for South Florida, and Frieden delivered the bleak news that “Zika and other diseases spread by Aedes aegypti are really not controllable with current technologies.”2,3

But never let it be thought that current technologies are all we have to offer. Researchers at Texas A&M University have created a type of mobile health technology to fight the mosquitos at their source: standing water.4

“With our new app, community members—citizen scientists so to speak—can do surveys and note the prevalence and locations of potential mosquito breeding grounds,” says Jennifer A. Horney, PhD, MPH, CPH, associate professor in the Texas A&M School of Public Health. “This data will then all be mapped online, and health departments can use that information to prioritize areas for mosquito control measures.”

People can record the number of different types of containers—old tires, buckets, bird baths, clogged gutters—that could harbor Zika-carrying mosquito eggs, along with the address of the property. The app then automatically adds the location to a website for local health officials to review.

The app is available in both iOS and Android versions, and can be downloaded by citizen scientists as well as government agencies.

Steve Halasey
Chief Editor, CLP
[email protected]
(626) 219-0199

 
REFERENCES

  1. Transcript for CDC telebriefing: Zika telebriefing update [online]. Atlanta: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2016. Available at: www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2016/t0923-zika-briefing-update.html. Accessed October 27, 2016.
  2. Advice for people living in or traveling to South Florida [online]. Atlanta: CDC, 2016. Available at: http://www.cdc.gov/zika/intheus/florida-update.html. Accessed October 27, 2016.
  3. Allen G. Zika may be in the US to stay [online]. Washington, DC: National Public Radio, 2016. Available at: www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2016/10/26/499470238/zika-may-be-here-to-stay-say-u-s-health-officials. Accessed October 27, 2016.
  4. Sumners C. Texas A&M launches new Zika-fighting app [online]. Bryan, Tex: Texas A&M University Health Science Center, 2016. Available at: https://vitalrecord.tamhsc.edu/texas-am-launches-new-zika-fighting-app. Accessed October 28, 2016.