This week in the Belize District, there's been an explosion in the mosquito population - swarms of mosquitoes are everywhere: outdoors, indoors, even in cars! So what is really happening? Is it normal to see an increase in these blood-eating pests around this time of the year? That's what we asked Senior Public Health Inspector – Mark Bernard today.
Mark Bernard - Senior Public Health Inspector
"Well, yes we've had a good dry season and the rainy season is here. I was a bit surprised because we keep getting calls from all over the place because of the high population of mosquitoes. It is not unusual, normally a mosquito eggs can last about two to three yeas in the soil even though it's dry. When that first rain comes, the earth absorbs most of that water but when the rain comes and you start to have water settling then that is when the mosquitoes hatch and you have an explosion. Normally we have a schedule where we would spray one place three times and then we do a maintenance every week but now because of this everybody wants some quick relief - then we have been concentrating around the school so far and some of those business places but we have three trucks that we'll be using right now. Those trucks will be coming out and we will try to divide the area into more of the swampy area where the infestation is high. In addition to that we'll be doing some treatment of the stagnant water and this treatment will prevent the wiggle waggle or the immature mosquitoes from turning into adults. So I will suspect that over the next couple of days we should have some relief."
Monica Bodden
"But it's nothing abnormal. It's normal around this time?"
Mark Bernard
"No it is not abnormal, we've never had this explosion last year but about two years ago it was like that."
Over the next few days, the Public Health Department will be going out in the fields treating stagnant water to prevent immature mosquitoes from turning into adults.
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