AFP, PARIS
Growing up in Tahiti, Anna-Bella Failloux saw first-hand the threat posed by mosquitoes: Nearly one-third of adults on the picturesque island once had swollen limbs from elephantiasis caused by their bites.She has since dedicated her life to studying mosquitoes and the diseases they transmit — a concern that looms ever larger as climate change expands the area where the insects roam.“You have to accept being bitten by a mosquito from time to time,” the 63-year-old entomologist at France’s Pasteur Institute said.
Children sleep inside mosquito nets on a pavement as people jog along a street early in the morning in Chennai, India, yesterday.
“But we have to avoid too many people getting sick and dying from the infections,” Failloux said, as she observed a mosquito trap being installed in the woods east of French capital, Paris.A keen seamstress, Failloux had sown the trap’s netting herself.
Every few days over summer, these traps are checked to see if the tiger mosquitoes inside could have spread yellow fever, dengue, chikungunya or Zika.
