An Evaluation of Removal Trapping to Control Rodents Inside Homes in a Plague-Endemic Region of Rural Northwestern Uganda

Vector Borne and Zoonotic Diseases
Rebecca J EisenKenneth L Gage

Abstract

Rodents pose a significant threat to human health, particularly in rural subsistence farming communities in Africa, where rodents threaten food security and serve as reservoirs of human pathogens, including the agents of plague, leptospirosis, murine typhus, rat-bite fever, Lassa fever, salmonellosis, and campylobacteriosis. Our study focused on the plague-endemic West Nile region of Uganda, where a majority of residents live in Uganda government-defined poverty, rely on subsistence farming for a living, and frequently experience incursions of rodents into their homes. In this study, we show that rodent removal was achieved in a median of 6 days of intensive lethal trapping with multiple trap types (range: 0-16 days). However, rodent abundance in 68.9% of homesteads returned to pretreatment levels within a median of 8 weeks (range 1-24 weeks), and at least a single rodent was captured in all homesteads by a median of 2 weeks (range 1-16 weeks) after removal efforts were terminated. Results were similar between homesteads that practiced rodent control whether or not their neighbors implemented similar strategies. Overall, intensive lethal trapping inside homes appears to be effective at reducing rodent abundance, but control was...Continue Reading

References

Jun 25, 2009·Critical Reviews in Microbiology·Bastiaan G MeerburgAize Kijlstra
Oct 10, 2009·The American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene·Gerald AmatreRebecca J Eisen
May 5, 2010·The American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene·Rebecca J EisenPaul S Mead
May 5, 2012·Environmental Health : a Global Access Science Source·Rifqah RoomaneyHanna-Andrea Rother
Apr 2, 2014·The American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene·Rebecca J EisenKenneth L Gage

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Citations

Nov 7, 2018·PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases·Almudena Mari SaezElisabeth Fichet-Calvet
Mar 23, 2019·BMJ Global Health·Laura T Mazzola, Cassandra Kelly-Cirino
Sep 13, 2020·Animals : an Open Access Journal From MDPI·Inge M KrijgerBastiaan G Meerburg
Apr 16, 2019·Frontiers in Veterinary Science·Dean E Biggins, David A Eads
Mar 12, 2021·Integrative Zoology·Soanandrasana RahelinirinaMinoarisoa Rajerison

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