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Year Round Protection Plan
Year Round Protection Plan to keep you and your family safe from pest.
Find yourself stung or bitten by something, but unsure why it happened? These pests can be annoying and cause distress, especially when it happen repetitively. Let us help you with these and other problems such as identifying who is occupying your roof space!
Zika virus infection is a disease caused by Zika virus that is spread to people primarily through the bite of an infected Aedes mosquito. The most common symptoms of Zika virus infection are fever, rash, joint pain, and conjunctivitis (red eyes).
An infectious disease spread through Aedes mosquito bite. The symptoms range from sudden high fever, rashes to acute pain in the muscle. This can escalate to potentially life threatening disease, namely dengue haemorrhagic fever.
Insects such as fleas and bed bugs bite to feed on blood. It bites to inject saliva so that their blood flows without clotting. The saliva often causes irritation, skin redness and swelling. It can also result illness by transmitting disease.
A fatal disease that transmits Leptospira bacteria from infected animals' urine, particularly rats. The symptoms include high fever, vomiting and diarrhoea. One could even suffer from kidney failure, meningitis and even death if not treated.
Noises of scurrying and scraping from the roof void is a sign that rodents or other wildlifes have taken up residence in your roof space. These pests can bring damage to your property from potential fire hazard to disease into your home.
A bite from a venomous snake is extremely dangerous and can even be life threatening. Reaction to snake bite varies according to species, from instant swelling, dizziness to difficulty breathing.
Call us on 02 290 8500, 1800 225 226 (Toll-free number) or contact us online for advice or a free site inspection.
Rodents can carry Salmonella bacteria that cause illness in both humans and pets. Infection occurs by consumption of food or water contaminated with rodent faeces.
The most common source of infection is by food contaminated with the faeces of farm animals.
Genetic studies of Salmonella show that it is extremely complex and as a result has a complex classification. There are two species recognised and many sub-species and sub-types, called serovars:
Symptoms show 12 to 72 hours after infection and include:
Most people recover in a few days without treatment other than replacement of fluid lost by the body.
Once a person is infected, the disease is easily transmitted to other people through poor hand hygiene and poor sanitation.
The UK NHS recommends that you clean toilet seats, toilet bowls, flush handles, taps and wash hand basins after use with detergent and hot water, followed by a household disinfectant.
We serotyped 44,087 Salmonella isolates from humans and 26,148 from other sources from 1993 through 2002. The most common serovar causing human salmonellosis in Thailand was Salmonella enterica Weltevreden. Serovars causing human infections in Thailand differ from those in other countries and seem to be related to Salmonella serovars in different food products and reservoirs.
Typhoid
One strain of Salmonella, S. Typhi, causes more severe infection and spreads from the intestines to the blood and lymphatic system and then to other body sites.
Typhoid fever
Typhoid fever (full name Salmonella enterica subsp. enterica serovar Typhi) is endemic in many developing countries where poor hygiene is widespread, affecting 27 million people a year, especially children.
Humans are the only animal infected by this strain so it is unlikely to be transmitted by rats unless they come into direct contact with human faeces, for example in sewer systems.
Typhoid can be treated with antibiotics and vaccines are available to give protection from infection.
In about 10% of Leptospirosis cases a more serious form develops, called Weil’s disease. This can result in organ failure, internal bleeding and death.
It needs urgent treatment in a hospital where ventilator, dialysis treatment, and intravenous antibiotics and fluids can be given.
Rat-bite fever is caused by two bacteria Streptobacillus moniliformis and Spirillum minus.
In infected rodents the bacteria are present in rat faeces and urine and secretions from the mouth, nose and eyes.
It is usually caused by a bite or scratch from an infected rat or other rodents such as mice, squirrels and gerbils. It can also be caught by handling infected animals and ingesting food or drink contaminated with rodent faeces or urine.
Symptoms of rat-bite fever differ between the two bacteria.
In addition, more serious complications can include:
Both infections can be treated with antibiotics.
Reports of rat-bite fever are rare in Europe and North America, but as reporting is not required it may be under-reported.
Many species of rodent carry hantaviruses, especially voles and mice.
Different species carry different virus whose virulence varies but which show similar symptoms of flu-like conditions.
Humans can catch the disease through contact with rodent urine, saliva and faeces, by touch, contaminated food or drink, or from breathing in aerosolised particles.
A severe infection is caused by the Hantaan virus which occurs in China, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, the Republic of Korea and far eastern Russia. This is carried by the striped field mouse.
In Europe the main carrier is the bank vole, which hosts the Puumala virus, the cause of a relatively mild form of haemorrhagic fever with renal syndrome (HFRS). Finland, countries of the former Yugoslavia, Sweden, Belgium, France, Germany, Greece and the Netherlands report significant numbers of cases annually.
The Dobrava virus, which causes a severe form of HFRS, is present in southern Europe, carried by the yellow-necked mouse. The milder Saaremaa virus is also carried by the striped field mouse in Estonia and nearby in Russia.
In America many species of hantavirus have been identified in rodents. The most important of these is Sine Nombre virus which is carried by deer mice in Canada, Mexico and the US. This causes Hantavirus pulmonary syndrome, which has a high fatality rate.
Tularemia is caused by the bacteria, Francisella tularensis, which has several strains that vary in virulence and geographical range.
Taxonomically it is classified in the group of primitive intracellular bacteria that includes Listeria, Legionella, Brucella, Coxiella and Rickettsia. It is in an isolated branch of primitive bacteria, having only one other species in the family Francisellaceae: F. philomiragia. However, genetic analysis may lead to new species being classified.
It is present in a wide geographic band across the whole northern hemisphere.
Vectors
Tularemia infects or is carried by a large number of mammals and arthropods.
Rodents
The rodent reservoirs of Tularemia include voles, mice, rats, muskrats, beavers, ground squirrels, lemmings and hamsters. Rabbits and hares are also common carriers of the disease.
Outbreaks in humans correlate to peaks in populations of rodents and hares.
Ticks & fleas
The bacteria has been found in many species of tick and flea, though the level of infection varies, so the significance each plays in human infection is not well understood.
Mosquitoes
Among mosquitoes, Aedes, Culex, and Anopheles species are known to carry the disease.
Biting flies
Among the biting flies, true horse flies (Tabanus spp. and Chrysozona spp.) and deer flies (Chrysops spp.) can pick up the disease from the reservoir animals and spread infection between animals.
The Tularemia bacteria can enter the human body via the skin, eyes, mouth, throat or lungs. This can occur through:
There are no known cases of human to human transmission (which is actually seen as an advantage in biological warfare in restricting infection to the target population) or of the direct transmission from one human to another by arthropods (fleas, ticks, mosquitoes, biting flies).
However, due to the very small number of bacteria needed to cause an infection, it is one of the most infectious diseases known.
The symptoms differ depending on the route of infection, but all produce a fever:
Symptoms last several weeks and can easily be mistaken for other diseases as Tularemia is relatively rare.
Tularemia responds to a range of antibiotics. Left untreated it can spread to multiple organs including lung, spleen, liver, lymphatic system.
A rat bite causing skin to breakout and infected
Source: Wikimedia commons: CDC
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Tularemia_lesion.jpg
There are two types of rat tapeworm, Hymenolepis nana and H. diminuta. Both species use a beetle (eg a flour beetle) as the main secondary host and are found in warm climates worldwide.
H. nana is the most common as, unusually for helminths, it can have a complete lifecycle in human intestines and spread from person to person through eggs in faeces. It attaches to the intestine wall and absorbs nutrients through the cells lining the intestine.
People can become infected through ingesting food or water contaminated with beetle or rat faeces or via hand contact with contaminated products, then ingesting from the hands.
The lifecycle is illustrated in a diagram produced by the US CDC:
Light infections may not produce any symptoms. Severe infections can cause:
Infection may have no damaging effect on adults, but is more likely to cause serious medical problems in children.
Echinococcosis is caused by several species of the tapeworm Echinococcus. The main hosts are carnivores such as foxes, coyotes and wolves and intermediary hosts are mainly grazing animals and pigs.
In at least three species, small rodents, including mice, voles and lemmings are intermediate hosts, which can pass on the cysts of the larval stage when eaten by cats and dogs. These in turn can pass on the cysts to humans through their faeces.
After ingestion the larva hatches, burrows through the intestine wall and passes through the blood system to other organs, especially the liver and lungs where it can remain indefinitely and invade surrounding tissue.
The infection can remain without obvious symptoms for years while the infected tissue grows like a tumour.