Up-to-date entomological aspects in the previously endemic areas of malaria in the Danube Plain and Dobrudja
Bîlbîe, I.; Cristescu, A.; Enescu, A.; Tâcu, V.; Giurcă, I.; Cristodorescu-Nicolescu, G.
Archives Roumaines de Pathologie Exprimentale et de Microbiologie 37(3-4): 389-397
1978
ISSN/ISBN: 0004-0037 PMID: 757665 Document Number: 137190
Biological and ecological investigations were carried out in 1976-77 on the mosquito fauna in 48 localities in 7 districts of the Dobrudja and Danube Plain regions of Romania where malaria had previously been endemic. Fewer Culicidae were found than in previous years, which was attributed on the one hand to ecological changes caused by improvements in water management and agricultural practices (such as the increase in mechanised farming leading to reduced numbers of draught animals in the region, and the new methods of cattle breeding in large light whitewashed shelters that were less suitable for adult mosquitoes than were the smaller individual shelters previously used), and on the other hand to previous high mortality of mosquitoes caused by insecticide applications in farms and houses. Of the 4 species involved in the transmission of malaria in Romania, Anopheles sacharovi Favr and A. atroparvus Van Thiel (labranchiae atroparvus) had been the most effective, but as these 2 species had been found mainly indoors it is concluded that the disappearance of the first species and the considerable reduction of the second was in 1976-77 caused by the spraying of houses; the remaining 2 vectors, of which A. messeae Flni. (maculipennis messeae) was now predominant, were much less efficient in transmitting malaria. The chances of the development of a malaria epidemic in the study region are considered to be greatly reduced although not eliminated completely. In tests of the susceptibility of the mosquitoes to insecticides, a high level of resistance was found to the organochlorine compounds DDT and dieldrin, and susceptibility to the organophosphates malathion, fenitrothion, and fenthion and the carbamate propoxur.