Impact of poverty Flies

Public Health Significance of Urban Pests 221 ted to health care professionals, the actual number of infections may be thirty or more times greater. Each year, an estimated 600 people die from acute salmonellosis. Second to salmonellosis, Campylobacter enteritis is the most common illness in Germany. In the United States, Campylobacter spp. are one of the most common causes of bacterial diar- rhoea, causing an estimated 2.45 million illnesses and 124 deaths annually. These enor- mous numbers of infections suggest the tremendous cost of diseases potentially trans- mitted by flies. The percentage of cases that may have been caused by fly-transmitted pathogens is unknown, however, thus preventing the calculation of any meaningful esti- mates.

7.6.2. Cost of control and management

The cost to the public of fly infestation in the United States is measured by the cost of pest control contracts for killing flies and other pests in and around homes, supermarkets, restaurants, hospitals, hotels, warehouses and chains of discount food stores. Contracts for home protection can cost between US 30 and US 50 a month. Commercial contracts can cost between US 240 and US 300 a month for chains of discount stores, between US 160 and US 225 a month for supermarkets, and between US 90 and US150 a month for fast food restaurants. Thus, a supermarket company with 20 stores in a city would pay between US 3200 and US 4500 a month or between US 38400 and US 54000 a year for management of flies and other pests. A comparable cost calculation may reveal similar pricing in some parts of Europe, but pricing data are rarely published. Costs for managing fly infestations are also incurred by local, state or national government agencies that on occasion must control flies in public recreational areas. State-funded aerial spray programmes, such as the one for stable fly management in western Florida, may operate on budgets of between US 45000 and US 50000 a year.

7.7. Impact of poverty

Because people at lower income levels may live under conditions that are more attractive to flies, poverty may play a role in attracting flies, fostering their development and trans- mitting disease. For the poor, money is limited and none is available for fly control. Marginal and unkempt housing can be attractive to flies and fly entry can be difficult to prevent. Unsanitary conditions inside and outside of houses attract flies and fly breeding may occur on the premises. Also, traditional methods of sanitation and food storage, pre- paration and disposal may be conducive to attracting flies and may aid their prolifera- tion. Education is required to teach people affected by poverty the need for proper sanitation and the principles of fly management. This will build awareness among them and allow people to help themselves. A quantitative measure of the impact of poverty might be dif- ficult to estimate, however. Flies 220 ning, have little practical knowledge of entomology. Also, flies may cause low-grade infections in large numbers of people, but these people may not be associated collectively unless they all attended a related event or unless the infections cause fatalities. Flies must be sampled and subjected to microbiological culturing to determine their sta- tus as a carrier of pathogens. Few communities can justify such sampling programmes unless large numbers of residents are affected. To aid in disease surveillance, the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control ECDC, counterpart of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention CDC in the United States, was founded in 2004. Its mission is to help strengthen the European Union’s defences against such infectious diseases as influenza, severe acute respiratory syndrome SARS and human immunodeficiency virusacquired immunodeficiency syn- drome HIVAIDS. To achieve this goal, its small core staff works with an extended network of partners across the European Union and in the European Economic AreaEuropean Free Trade Association Member States Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway and Switzerland. The ECDC works in partnership with national health protection bodies to strengthen and develop continentwide disease surveillance and early warning systems and to develop authoritative scientific opinions about the risks posed by new and emerging infectious diseases. Weekly and monthly releases about incidences of commu- nicable disease in the European Community, plus archives of releases back to 1995, can be found on the ECDC web site ECDC, 2006. The mission of the CDC, which was founded in 1946 to help control malaria, is to pro- mote health and quality of life by preventing and controlling disease, injury, and disabi- lity. The CDC applies research and findings to improve people’s daily lives and responds to health emergencies. More can be learned about the CDC mission and activities by visi- ting its web site CDC, 2006. 7.6. Cost to the public of fly infestation 7.6.1. Cost of health-related conditions