Control de una epidemia de peste bubónica con DDT y "1080"

Abstract

In the tropical city of Tumbes, Peru, with 10,000 inhabitants, with no public water supply or sewerage systems, and most of the houses built of bamboo or wattle, murine plague, followed by a human epidemic, broke out in the latter part of 1945. A total of 21 foci were located, one of the two most important ones being in the Public Market. In these foci 27.3 per cent of the rats found and 56 per cent of the fleas found on rats or in rat nests were plague-infected. Human cases totaled 40 with a 35 per cent death rate. Control methods consisted in the use of DDT in powder form (diluted to 10 per cent in talc or pyrophyllite, and 5-2 per cent in refined wheat flour), used first on the floors and next in walls, ceilings, etc., followed by the applications of sodium fluoroacetate (1080) as a raticide. The effectiveness of DDT can be judged by the end of the epidemic in 4 days after finishing the first application (the only case occurring over a month later was due to incomplete treatment of a known focus); and 81.6 per cent lowering of the flea infestation of rats, and an 87.9 per cent decrease in the number of fleas found in rat nests, after the first application. There was a final reduction of over 90 per cent in the number of fleas in the epizoâtic foci Murine plague was reduced 75.6 per cent after the first ...(AU)