PHONE
800-231-3236 (toll free)
707-285-2200 (office)
707-285-2210 (fax)

ADDRESS
595 Helman Lane
Cotati, California
94931-9736

HOURS
Monday through Friday
7:00AM to 3:30PM

Mosquito Control Agencies need to be closely aware of any diseases that might be transmitted by insects within the district's borders.

Passive surveillance occurs through the California Department of Health Services, based on manditory and prompt reporting of "notifiable" diseases. Local district personnel keep abreast through direct contact with state and county health officials. The California Mosquito and Vector Control Association has a standing committee (the Disease Control Committee) that frequently reviews the status of vector-borne diseases throughout the state, and recommends procedures for their surveillance or control.

SOME 'NOTIFIABLE' DISEASES

Health workers must report all cases of these arthropod-borne diseases to their County or State Department of Health Services

• California encephalitis
• Eastern equine encephalitis
• Saint Louis encephalitis
• Western equine encephalitis
• West Nile virus encephalitis
• Lyme disease
• Ehrlichiosis
• Malaria
• Plague
• Rocky Mountain spotted fever
• Tularemia
• Yellow fever

Some diseases like encephalitis, plague or trypanosomiasis are kept under active surveillance in counties where they are known to be endemic. But health workers know that conditions can change quickly: the ranges of wildlife species shift, avian hosts migrate with the seasons, and within a few hours infected persons or domestic animals can travel from overseas or anywhere in the state.

One California agency, the Alameda County Mosquito Abatement District, conducts a full public health follow-up of every malaria infection discovered in their county. They thus insure close attention to any possible reestablishment of the disease involving transmission by local mosquitoes.

The California Department of Health Services, together with several vector control districts, maintains an active "earlywarning" program to help detect the presence of encephalitis virus. In the San Francisco Bay Area counties, they have placed 15 sentinal chicken flocks of 10 birds each. If antibodies appear in the blood of the chickens, it shows they were recently bitten by infected mosquitoes. Information about the California vector-borne disease surveillance system, including maps with locations of the sentinal chicken flocks, is available at the California Vectorborne Disease Surveillance System website. The California Vectorborne Disease Surveillance System is a cooperative project of the Mosquito and Vector Control Association of California, the California Department of Health Services, and the University of California.

Each year, Marin / Sonoma personnel help set out and and take bi-weekly blood samples from five surveillance flocks. That is how they knew that Western Equine Encephalitis was active in Sonoma County in 1992, 1993,1994 and 1997, and in neighboring Napa and Solano counties in the fall of 1996.

Some districts examine wild birds caught by mist-netting or other methods, and obtain a small blood sample to test for antibodies to encephalitis virus. The birds are then banded and released following a procedure developed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the California Department of Fish and Game.

The District also collaborates with county, state and federal health personnel and biologists from the University of California in a study of newly discovered endemic sites in Marin and Sonoma Counties for Babesiosis, Ehrlichiosis and Lyme disease.