• Question: how many insects have caused diseases and how much bacteria do they carry?

    Asked by izzy to Kevin, Liz, Beccy, Rosie on 12 Jun 2017.
    • Photo: anon

      anon answered on 12 Jun 2017:

      Some mosquitoes carry viruses like Zika virus and dengue virus.
      Some mosquitoes carry malaria (which is a parasitic infection).
      Ticks can spread Lyme Disease.
      Bedbugs can spread Chagas disease.
      Lice can transmit bacteria, so can fleas.

      The list goes on and on!

    • Photo: Rosie Fok

      Rosie Fok answered on 12 Jun 2017:

      To add to Christl’s list:
      Tsetse flies carry sleeping sickness
      Blackflies carry river blindness (cause by microscopic worms)
      Bluebottles carry trachoma (a bacterial infection, Chlamydia trachomatis, that can cause blindness)

      Some insects themselves are the problem – google tumba fly if you want some gross pictures.

    • Photo: Liz Buckingham-Jeffery

      Liz Buckingham-Jeffery answered on 12 Jun 2017:

      So many insects can cause diseases!

      One that I learned about recently, and that Christl and Rosie haven’t mentioned, is the sandfly. This spreads the disease Visceral Leishmaniasis (which we can call VL for short) in Brazil. Sandflies spread the disease to both humans and dogs by biting them. I was working on a project last year to try and control the spread of VL.

    • Photo: Rebecca Corkill

      Rebecca Corkill answered on 13 Jun 2017:

      Oh yay, I like this question. I did a lot of it in my Master’s at the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine- so this is a really big topic.
      I think the biggies have been mentioned.

      Most of the diseases mentioned are called Neglected Tropical Diseases (NTD).
      And there is a lot of insects are vectors (which mean they carry the disease to the host).

      The WHO website has a really nice fact file on the vector-borne diseases
      http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs387/en/

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