CHAPTER XII 



RURAL MOSQUITO AND MALARIA CONTROL 



UNFAVORABLE FACTORS IN RURAL CONTROL 



Mosquitoes and mosquito-borne diseases are, in general, more 

 troublesome in the rural regions than in the cities. Construc- 

 tion of water-supply and sewerage . systems eliminates a mul- 

 tiplicity of artificial breeding-places, while city grading and 

 ditching help to provide a means for rain-fall to run off, thus 

 largely obviating the rain-water pool as a breeding-place. 



In the rural areas, there are always a number of natural breed- 

 ing-places. To these must be added the man-made breeding- 

 places, more or less necessary in the country, but not in the city, 

 such as cisterns, stock-troughs, stock-ponds, cesspools and a host 

 of others. Furthermore, a certain amount of anti-mosquito work 

 now is being done in most large cities that require it, while in the 

 country, owing to sparsity of population and the large areas 

 involved, community anti-mosquito measures are generally 

 impracticable at present, due to the heavy per capita cost. It 

 will be seen, therefore, that at the present time, at least, the 

 problem of mosquito control in rural districts is essentially an 

 individual one. 



Towns and villages without modern sanitary conveniences and 

 the unsewered outlying suburbs of the cities are also more diffi- 

 cult to handle than the cities, for the same reasons given above. 

 Anti-mosquito measures in them are, however, somewhat more 

 practicable than in the country itself, because of the greater 

 density of population, which means that the cost will be spread 

 over a much greater number of beneficiaries per unit of area. 



FAVORABLE FACTORS IN RURAL CONTROL 



On the other hand, however, it may be said that, as a rule, 

 the rural home is better situated, from an anti-mosquito stand- 

 point than many urban homes. Frequently the rural home is situ- 

 ated on fairly high ground, where the wind can reach it and at a 

 respectful distance from such natural breeding-places as swamps, 

 etc. 



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