Plans to combat dengue fever to be formulated by next spring

What to combat dengue? Easy, screen travelers arriving in Japan for the following symptoms.

•Sudden, high fever •Severe headaches •Pain behind the eyes •Severe joint and muscle pain •Nausea •Vomiting •Skin rash, which appears three to four days after the onset of fever •Mild bleeding (such a nose bleed, bleeding gums, or easy bruising)

Pretty sure folks would standout like a giant panda bear if they had dengue fever.

Next, Ebola screening and then HIV!

But, if the Japanese did this the Left PC fanatics would cry racism.

Next spring?

If/when ebola breaks out here and if they take that long to formulate a strategy, everyone will be long dead before they decide to hold their first meeting to discuss the crisis....!

So just what are any of the countermeasures, that the health ministry is recommending? I hope they don't still think they can cure the root problems by simply spraying poison everywhere!

What to combat dengue? Easy, screen travelers arriving in Japan for the following symptoms.

Actually that would leave one or two weeks for people to come to Japan without symptoms but already infected, the only thing that you would accomplish would be detaining people that most likely are in absolutely no condition to travel anyway.

In the case of Dengue there is need for a vector to produce an epidemic, that is why there is no real rush to act now, next spring seems to be an appropriate time to decide the course of action once the people in charge have the best information about the expected weather on the summer and the mosquito situation next year, that would mean quite a lot of money that can be used most efficiently. Nevertheless, population education should probably begin at least a couple of months before the mosquito season begins.

So just what are any of the countermeasures, that the health ministry is recommending? I hope they don't still think they can cure the root problems by simply spraying poison everywhere!

Even if Japanese in general have little experience about tropical diseases there are a lot of professionals in Japan working on them thanks to cooperation programs in countries of South East Asia and Africa. The ministry of health can have world class advice on what to do to control the disease very easily.

This is nothing to do with screening travelers. The disease has already been picked up by mosquitoes in Japan and will undoubtedly spread. At present, there is no way to combat dengue fever other than by exterminating as many mosquitoes as possible and eliminating their breeding habitats. Brazil and Australia are trying out a plan to introduce a GM mosquito which is resistant to dengue and they hope this kind of mosquito becomes dominant throughout their mosquito population.