Sanitation -- Cuba -- Havana; Sanitation -- Panama; Yellow fever -- Cuba -- Havana
It is very surprising and impressive to see how rapidly such a system
will free a city of mosquitoes, and how after a few months of such
work you cease to be annoyed by them. In yellow-fever work this
system of destroying mosquito larvæ is the essential; everything
else is secondary to it. In the built-up portions of a city such as
Havana, caring for the cisterns, water barrels and containers is the
essential work, but as you approach the suburbs, pools and puddles
become more frequent, and this character of mosquito breeding-places
becomes more important than containers. Wherever possible these
breeding-places should be drained, though oiling in this class of
work has a very useful field. In the suburbs, in these pools and
puddles, the anopheles, the malarial mosquito, becomes common and
this disease has to be looked after. We had fifty men engaged in
this work, under a different set of inspectors from those doing
the stegomyia work. This was made necessary, as the men doing the
anopheles work were occupied almost entirely in the suburbs of the
city. The details I will describe in another place.
CHAPTER VI
THE RESULTS ACCOMPLISHED IN HAVANA
From the account already given of yellow fever it is evident that the
parasite has to be introduced into a locality, either in the body
of a human being sick of yellow fever, or in the body of a female
stegomyia mosquito which has become infected by the parasite. It is
evident that if the health authorities can keep out these two sources
of infection, yellow fever can never occur in that locality.
With this object in view we established a modern quarantine at
Havana. Any ship coming in with yellow fever aboard was placed in
quarantine. The vessel itself was fumigated so as to kill all the
mosquitoes. This rendered the ship safe. All the non-immune crew were
taken off, carried to quarantine station, where they were cared for
during a period of six days. If no sickness developed during this
period, it was concluded that the infected mosquitoes aboard the ship
had not bitten these non-immunes up to the time of their departure.
They were therefore released and allowed to return. The immunes were
not considered liable to yellow fever, even if they had been bitten
by the infected mosquitoes.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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