Has anyone noticed the increase in mosquitoes lately? Are they keeping you awake at night with their biting and buzzing?
You probably have. The new swarms of mosquitoes are due to the massive amount of warm and stagnant wanter that still remains in many parts of Bangkok. The Wall Street Journal did a story on the plague of mosquitos on their Southeast Asia Realtime blog yesterday Nov. 28 which noted that despite being one of the most developed countries in the region, Thailand has often reported the highest number of dengue fever cases. Dengue fever is generally spread by mosquitoes.
No outbreaks have been reported as part of the 2011 floods though, and the WSJ quoted Pornthep Sirivanarangsan, the director general of the Disease Control Department of Thailand’s Public Health Ministry, as saying that his department was monitoring the situation.
NGOs like Unicef are also keeping an eye on things and distributing insecticide mosquito nets.
Some quotes from the story illustrate how bad things have gotten in certain areas:
“They are flying all over my house, up on the ceiling and on the walls,” said Thanyathip Netichaiseth, 48, who lives in a three-story townhouse with two children that has been partly under water the past two weeks.“When I look up the ceiling, I’m shocked, my ceiling is turning black from all the mosquitoes,” she said. “When they bite you, it really hurts and itches. Later on, the bites become red and get bigger and infected.”
…
Wannakorn Kaochartchai, a 43-year-old vendor of flowers and jasmine garlands in a Bangkok-area fresh market, says she’s glad to be back at work after her market flooded for two weeks. But now she and her friends have to suffer daily attacks from the mosquito swarms – and nothing seems to be able to stop them.
“I’ve never seen anything like this before in my life,” she said of the mosquitoes she finds each day when she arrives at 4 a.m. She said she lights mosquito coils when leaving at night and leaves them there, and then lights more of them in the morning, to no avail. She also uses mosquito spray and a fan to help blow them away – but they keep coming back.
“Their size is bigger than usual and they’re not afraid of humans – they just attack us right away and sometimes bite through my pants, and it hurts,” she said. “I have mosquitoes in my house, too, but what can I do? I don’t know what to do because I try to kill them so I don’t catch dengue – but they’re never gone.”
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