The immigration policies of the Obama administration and the democrats in Congress have opened the door to another disease, Dengue hemorrhagic fever that is now

Source: www.examiner.com

Dengue is literally one of dozens of foreign born diseases that make their way into the United States on an irregular basis.

 

The fact that we hear about this now surprises me, since this has been a public health issue since the large migrations into this country from the south began.  Dengue is mosquito borne.  So once the winter kicks in its travel to new places will be significantly hampered.  

 

Dengue, like most fevers, is distinguishable from other conditions brought on by mosquitoes.  It has not penetrate the northern latitudes of the U.S. as much as west nile.  Its common vector is Aedes aegytptii.  There are other Aedes species of mosquitoes in the United States however.  

 

Some of my first disease ecology mapping engaged in out in the field involved the studies of west nile.  My documentation of Aedes in a county in NY by trapping is illustrated in one of these early ArcView GIS maps I produced back around 2002/3 .  The page covering species distributions is https://brianaltonenmph.com/west-nile/vectors/ 

 

This work I did on West Nile between 1999 and 2006 was actually quite extensive.  The innovation I demonstrated was the role of canopies and sunlight behavior/exposure on vector species distributions, by species and risk for a given region for west nile.  These pages are frequently reviewed by students learning the disease ecology approach to surveillance.  For the best of the pages, perhaps go to my work on the use of light sensor measures around trap sites: https://brianaltonenmph.com/west-nile/west-nile-surveillance-2/ 

 

Remote sensing and NLCD/Satellite imagery were two other avenues I explored for West Nile surveillance.  (https://brianaltonenmph.com/west-nile/nlcd-grid-mapping-and-west-nile/ and https://brianaltonenmph.com/west-nile/6-remote-sensing/ 😉

 

In 2002/3, I demonstrated the value of GIS when the team I was working with used it to find the hot spot for positive testing crows (https://brianaltonenmph.com/west-nile/case-related-surveillance/ ); this was followed by the discovery of an ecological setting where west nile virus overwintered. 

 

Back to Dengue – – – the following is a link to a 3D Videomap map of this ICD’s past behaviors:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eHyehbfOwFo.   

 

Interstingly, the disease, also known as Breakbone fever, has a local NY plant known as Boneset that was a diaphoretic used to break the fever in these cases during the late 1700s/very early 1800s.   The presence of Boneset (Eupatorium perforatum) and this legend on its use is a strong indicator on the local history of Dengue Fever in the upper-Mid-Atlantic states as well (A native American remedy purportedly, but with laboratory testing demonstrated in the medical school setting as early as the late 1790s).  Therefore, it was not restricted to the warmest climate settings in U.S. medical history. (My 20+ years of research on this topic as well, is partially initiated at https://brianaltonenmph.com/6-history-of-medicine-and-pharmacy/trapper-and-explorer-medicine-ca-1790-1840/ — it has dozens of pages).

 

 

See on Scoop.it – Medical GIS Guide