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Housecall, our weekly general-interest e-newsletter, keeps you up to date on a wide variety of health topics with timely, reliable, practical information, recipes, blogs, questions and answers with Mayo Clinic experts and more. Our biweekly topic-specific e-newsletters also include blogs, questions and answers with Mayo Clinic experts, and other useful information that will help you manage your health.
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Mayo Clinic Housecall
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Prevention
By Mayo Clinic staffThe best approach to prevention of viral hemorrhagic fevers is to take precautions to protect yourself from infection:
- Get vaccinated. Vaccines exist for yellow fever and Argentine hemorrhagic fever. If you're traveling to areas where these diseases are endemic, consider being vaccinated. The yellow fever vaccine is generally considered safe and effective, although in rare cases, serious side effects can occur. Check with the CDC about the status of the countries you're visiting — some require certificates of vaccination for entry. The yellow fever vaccine isn't recommended for children under 9 months of age or for pregnant women, especially during the first trimester.
- Be sure you're mosquito-proof. Take common-sense precautions to protect yourself and your family from mosquitoes, such as wearing light-colored long pants and long-sleeved shirts or better yet, permethrin-coated clothing. Don't apply permethrin directly to the skin. Avoid unnecessary activities at dusk and dawn when mosquitoes are most active and apply mosquito repellent with a 20 to 25 percent concentration of DEET to your skin and clothing. DEET is a powerful insecticide; use it with care. Apply it in moderation and don't use it on the hands of young children or on infants under 2 months of age. Oil of lemon eucalyptus and other more natural products, including oils of geranium, cedar and lemongrass, may offer protection similar to low concentrations of DEET. If you're staying in tented camps or local hotels, use bed nets and mosquito coils.
- Avoid high-risk areas. Before you travel, obtain a consular information sheet from the Office of Overseas Citizens Services, which provides information on health and security issues. If there's an outbreak or epidemic of infectious disease in an area you're planning to visit, consider revising your itinerary.
At home
Rodent control in and around your home is the primary way to prevent hantavirus infection. These measures can help:
- Keep pet food covered and stored in rodent-proof containers, and don't leave food out overnight.
- Store trash in rodent-proof containers, and clean the containers often.
- Dispose of garbage on a regular basis.
- Make sure doors and windows have tightfitting screens.
- If you use traps inside or outside, be sure to keep children away from them.
- Place woodpiles and stacks of bricks and other materials at least 100 feet (about 30 meters) from your house.
- Mow your grass closely and keep brush trimmed to within 100 feet (about 30 meters) from your house.
- If you find evidence of rodent infestation in your home, don't sweep or vacuum the area. Instead, make sure you wet the entire area with a household disinfectant, or with a solution of 1.5 cups of bleach to 1 gallon of water (about .37 liters of bleach to 4 liters of water). The CDC has more advice on cleaning up a rodent infestation on the Web.
