[00:06.95]Last summer, Americans in the eastern state of New York were threatened by a disease never before seen in the country--West Nile Fever.
[00:19.59]The disease usually is not serious in people.
[00:23.61]But it can cause swelling of the brain.
[00:26.85]The disease killed seven people and made sixty-two others sick in and around New York City.
[00:35.42]Today, officials say more than 2,000 other people could also have been infected,
[00:42.95]but showed little or no signs of being sick.
[00:46.13]The West Nile virus also killed thousands of birds in the area.
[00:52.90]West Nile Fever is carried by birds.
[00:57.26]The disease is then passed to mosquitoes when the insects bite birds that have the virus.
[01:04.97]People become infected when mosquitoes bite them.
[01:08.96]When the disease was first discovered in New York,
[01:14.03]health officials immediately began efforts to kill mosquitoes.
[01:19.07]They hoped the threat would end when the mosquitoes became inactive during the winter.
[01:26.10]Last month, however, they reported that the virus has survived.
[01:31.12]Health officials found inactive mosquitoes still infected with the disease.
[01:37.46]And they found a bird killed by the disease.
[01:41.30]This year, health officials have started a campaign in the eastern United States to teach people how to prevent being bitten by mosquitoes.
[01:53.32]Health officials say this could be the start of an infectious disease danger in the United States
[02:01.03]that has been present for years around the world.
[02:03.98]The World Health Organization says 500,000,000 people around the world each year are infected with sicknesses carried by mosquitoes,
[02:15.60]These include dengue fever, malaria,yellow fever and brain fevers such as West Nile.
[02:24.12]More than 2,000,000 people die of these diseases, many of them young children.
[02:32.27]One example of the increase in these diseases is dengue fever.
[02:37.26]In the 1950s, the serious form of the disease infectedabout 1,000 people each year.
[02:45.80]Today, more than 500,000 people are infected each year.
[02:51.34]About 24,000 people die of the disease each year.
[02:56.33]The W-H-O organized a campaign to kill the mosquitoes that carry the sickness.
[03:03.20]But experts say it was stopped too soon.
[03:07.48]As a result, dengue fever has spread through North and South America.
[03:13.93]The mosquito that carries dengue fever has been found in eleven states in the United States.
[03:21.40]There is no medicine to prevent dengue and West Nile fevers.
[03:26.68]Health experts say everyone should take steps to prevent mosquito bites.
[03:32.43]These include removing containers of water where mosquitoes could lay their eggs.
[03:39.61]Wearing clothing that covers the arms and legs. |