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INSECTS – A public health problem which now extends to the metropolis. Aedes mosquitoes (“Tiger mosquitoes”), vectors of diseases such as zika, chikungunya or dengue, will “represent a major health risk across the country“During” the next decades, “said Tuesday a commission of inquiry in the Assembly, which calls for vigorous action.
“This is an invasive species, which did not exist in France before 2004. In 2019, 58 departments out of the 96 metropolitan departments were colonized”, according to the rapporteur and LREM deputy of Mayotte Ramlati Ali.
“If for fifty years the metropolitan territory has lived free from diseases transmitted by mosquitoes, this is no longer the case today. We will have to learn to live with them, while limiting their impact on the health of the French as much as possible ”, she adds in her report.
In the overseas territories, this “public health problem” is “recurrent”, with “increasingly virulent epidemics”, notes the commission of inquiry.
Chaired by the former PS Minister of Overseas Territories Ericka Bareigts, who has just left the Assembly for the town hall of Saint-Denis de La Réunion, the committee is submitting 46 proposals to “overhaul a prevention policy”, “hand over to flat the institutional framework ”of the fight against the proliferation of these mosquitoes or“ perpetuate ”the means of research.
Avoid massive spraying
In terms of insecticides, deltamethrin “is today the only substance available to the public authorities to fight, in the short term, against Aedes mosquitoes in a given place”, according to the report.
But if this product “remains essential”, the commission of inquiry pleads to avoid massive spraying, for environmental reasons or for fear “of increasing the risk of the appearance of resistance to the product in mosquitoes”. It calls for the diversification of molecules and favoring actions in the field.
Better information for the public and the establishment “in affected areas of a regional prevention plan against the development of breeding sites” are recommended.
The committee also asks to provide mayors with a guide to actions to fight against Aedes mosquitoes.
On the legal and institutional level, a bill on health security, adopted at first reading by the Senate in February, provides a “first response” according to the committee.
If the text reaches the Assembly, it could be the “vector” of a “more ambitious rationalization of the responsibilities of public actors”, in particular to make regional health agencies (ARS) “the conductor of the fight anti-vector ”, according to the commission.
See also on The HuffPost: 3 steps to use your mosquito repellent correctly
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