science, health and technology

Ever since a hantavirus outbreak in the Azuero Peninsula led health authorities to ban the 2000 Carnival celebrations in the area --- particularly in Las Tablas --- public awareness of this frequently fatal infectious disease has grown. The virus is carried by several species of rats and mice, most of which are outdoors dwellers. However, environmental changes can cause population explosions and resulting migrations or droughts or famines that drive the rodents to seek sustenance around human habitations.

Hantavirus is now endemic in Panama. The disease has a long-term reservoir in local rodent populations and we can expect occasional human infections as a result. But certain conditions raise that risk to one of an epidemic, which is one reason why the Ministry of Health brought in experts from the US Centers for Disease Control to see if factors like this year's freakish El Niño weather --- heavy rains in January and so on --- increased the ever-present threat. It was determined that they didn't, so the show went on.

Meanwhile the ministry has renewed its public information campaign in order to reduce the risks. The basic concepts are to deny food and water to rodents and to take precautions like using rubber gloves and dust masks when cleaning areas that are known or suspected to have been infested with rats or mice.












Also in this section:
The Gulf of Mexico's "dead zone"
Campaign against hantavirus

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