The Alex rat plague and the associated diseases
JOBURG – Avoid food scraps lying around if you have a rat control programme or have put down rat poison.
With the changing temperatures and global warming, there has been an increase in the number of rodents in our presence.
Rats are everywhere and they are an absolute nuisance. They carry many diseases such as hepatitis, plague, jaundice, salmonellosis and create damage to buildings, furniture and other materials.
Rats live in places such as roofs and ceilings, trees and shrubs, drains, food stores and close to rubbish dumps. Rats can breed from as early as six weeks; they breed four times a year and have a litter of between eight to 10 young born at each time.
That’s a high infestation unless something is done to curb their booming increase in population.
Rats transmit disease by a person having direct contact with them, contact with their faeces and urine. People can also get sick by consuming food and water that is contaminated with their faeces and urine.
Rats are also carriers of parasites such as fleas, ticks and lice. Rats cause diseases such as food poisoning, plague, leptospirosis, and Bartonella. Plague can kill a large population of the community.
Leptospirosis is caused by the urine of rats coming in contact with the broken skin of a person or ingestion of contaminated food. Bartonella can infect healthy people, whereby they are bitten by fleas, and ticks carried by rats.
The disease is especially a problem for HIV positive persons who have infections for a long time. A major concern in a community is rat bites especially to babies and young children. Rats usually attack them when they are asleep, biting at their noses and fingers and toes or other softer parts of their bodies.
How can we control the rat population in our community?
People prepare food and then wash pots in drains and dispose of food in catch pits. Rats and mice then feed on leftover food particles. We should be separating scrap food and solid pieces of food from the water. The waste should then be placed in a plastic bag to be disposed of in a dustbin.
No matter how much poison or bait laid down by the City of Joburg, there is no way of eliminating a rat infestation as long as the community keep on feeding them through scraps of refuse or waste water.
Try and get rid of sources of food and water so that we can prevent rats from breeding. Rats will never eat poison while there are other food sources available.
For more information or a solution to your rat problem, contact the City of Johannesburg’s Pest Control Department.
Details: Pest Control Department 011 582 1517.
