Health Issues? Dengue/hepatitus/mango or sun poinsening (and bugs)

Dengue fever and hepatitus are both rare here. To avoid mango poisoning, don't eat the skin and make sure the fruit is ripe. (It is not actually a poisoning but an allergy.) The insects will largely stay outside if you seal up your house like Fort Knox. It's 4:00 in the morning here, I just got out of bed, and I found one millipede on the floor. I opened the front door and kicked it outside. This is not a third world country. We are just a little behind the mainland.

Most folks I know on island, including us, use bottled water for drinking and cooking and use their cistern water for bathing and everything else. That would be the way for you to go if you're concerned about water-borne illnesses.

One precaution to take when living in the islands that you might not have bothered with on the mainland is to treat every cut and scrape with an antibiotic ointment. The tropical environment of warm air and added moisture (especially perspiration) give bacteria a perfect enviroment in which to thrive. Both of us developed a boil from a small cut within our first few weeks here because we waited until after we showered that night to tend to the wound instead of immediately cleaning it and dressing it with an anitbiotic ointment.

As for bugs -- there are a lot more types of bugs here that want to get inside than you'd find in many places on the mainland, including millipedes, centipedes, beetles (yes, some do fly), sugar and other types of ants, lots of mosquitos. OhioGuy is right -- the key to keeping them out is making sure that you close up any gaps between inside and outside. Have good weather stripping around your doors, make sure there are no holes in your screens and that the screen fits the window perfectly, etc. The place we bought was/is a disaster in this area, so we've had lots and lots of multi-legged visitors while we wait for the replacement windows and door walls we bought to be installed. I'm not a fan of bugs in any way (I can tolerate them when I camp because I'm going into their turf, but cannot stand them when they leave their home and invade mine!), so one of the first services we engaged was with a pest control company to do monthly services for us. It has worked very well, and we should be pretty much insect free in the house once those new windows and doorwalls are in place.

BTW, in addition to insects there are also the little ground lizards that are EVERYWHERE (there is some disagreement as to whether they are geckos or not). These guys will also show up in your house -- conventional wisdom is that lizards (and therefore the occasional lizard poop) in your house will happen, no matter what you do to keep them out. It's important to remember that lizards are the good guys -- they eat those bugs we just talked about -- so it's very important to employ a catch and release strategy for managing them instead of killing them. My cats have become excellent lizard spotters, and Kelly has earned the title of the Lizard King for his ability to catch them and release them into the far reaches of the yard.

Life here is not like living in the wilds of the Amazon jungle -- frankly, this whole bugs and lizards thing isn't really that different than I remember Southern Florida being during annual visits to stay with my sister and other relatives who lived down there.

HC

Thanks for all of the information, I was just really worried about dengue fever, but i'm glad to hear it's scarce out there. As for the bugs, thanks for the good advice! Hopefully I will find a place with plenty of screens! Thanks for the thourough answer Hip Crip 😉

ps I like lizards~!

I just got back from saint croix yesterday, and I had not heard any of those diseses. although yes there are flying cocoroches, and bats. They do no harm.

I would recommend the two part vaccine for Hepatitis A, as well as the 3 part vaccine for Hepatitis B. Whether or not they are endemic to the USVI (there is a higher incidence of Hep A in the VI than there is stateside, but B is about the same) is irrelevant....they are real health risks wherever you go. Get the vaccines, and that's one thing you can cross off your list of worries.

Haven't had any of the other dread diseases that you mentioned, but have seen others that have, and dengue is not that pretty a thing to have. A good friend of mine described it as such when she had it after Hurricane Marilyn: "I thought I was going to die, I felt so bad. When I found out that I was NOT going to die of it, I was upset."

Sounds like a good idea to get those vaccinations. I read that the water can get contaminated after hurricanes and one can contract hepatitis. But also I think it's a good idea to use bottled water. Whenever I travel outside of the us i always use bottled water, just because of the natural bacteria that every country's water system has. I heard about dengue fever from Tahiti, they call it "the bone break fever". because it makes you feel like your bones are breaking, it causes a headache so severe you think your eyes are going to pop out! i'd REALLY like to avoid that, I'm anti-sick freak. I guess just good mosquito protection is the key, also I understand the specific type of mosquito that carries it basically hangs around covered outside areas (like the porch) in the late afternoons. I am going to have to get one of those mosqiuto zappers, in tahiti they also burn a lot of insence to keep them away. I just wanted to see if there was a lot of dengue fever cases, like in tahiti. dengue fever is actually all over the most of the world except the cooler climates, i.e. norther hemisphere. it's even here in the US in the southern most states, although being from Sothern california i have never heard of a single case. so it depends on where you go i guess...doesn't sound like too many people here have been effected by it.
Thanks for all of the info!

flying cockroaches are really gross

Just had to mention a difference in perspective -- not one that negates the different feelings of others, but one that I see as making us more of what we are.

To me, flying cockroaches are truly beautiful.

Viktor Frankl ("Man's Search for Meaning") survived the holocaust by finding beauty in everything he experienced while he was in the concentration camps in Nazi Germany in WWII. For food, he was given a thin soup that was mostly water and contained a dead fish head for flavor. Frankel managed to focus his energy in such a way as to avoid the anger and resentment that the Nazis wanted him to feel and instead thanked God and his captors for this lovely fish head and chose to truly appreciate its beauty in helping him survive.

Cockroaches are unbelievably perfect survival machines that have travelled our planet in virtually every climate and watched dinosaurs, woolly mammoths and cave men come and go as short-lived passers by. They probably see us as the next species that will soon dissappear from the top of the food chain because we don't understand how to adapt to things that change. We can learn much about tenacity and adaptability from cockroaches.

Post Edited (08-03-04 01:09)

I am convinced that if there was ever a nuclear war, the only things that would be left would be Cher and her farewell tour, and cockroaches.

I'm glad you like them so much. I just can't seem to get past how they look.

Now wait....

I said they were beautiful. I didn't say I LIKE them.....

There are some reasons why cockroaches are so successful.

They are of the family Blattidae (bla-TIE-dee), which means flattened. They can squeeze into cramped places and hide.

They can hear your footsteps from a distance and go running.

They can sense air currents made by predators and also go running.

Roaches are serious carriers of diseases that still kill people in third world countries. Boric acid has been used for centuries to kill them. You can put this into cracks and crevices in your house. Be careful not to contaminate food preparation areas. Baits and sprays also work.

The scientific order is orthoptera (or-THOP-ter-uh): ortho means straight, like the orthodontist who straigthens your teeth, and ptera is Greek for wing. They have straight wings!

I just got back from STX and all of my friends have dengue. It seems to be rampant, especially on the north shore. One girl had to fly back to the states because of it. I would definitely grab the off and lather up.

Abbi

Abbi,

Are you sure this was dengue fever? Was it medically diagnosed with confirmation from a second physician? Had these friends been recently traveling in other countries in the tropics where they may have picked it up?

I ask because I read the paper every morning and listen to the radio and I've heard nothing about dengue fever on St. Croix. You would expect some cases of it now and then, but I've heard nothing about it being rampant.

FOG et al: I found this interesting article from the CDC: http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/dvbid/dengue/

Also, I think you will find that there are lots of things that occur in the Virgin Islands that never make it to the papers or the radio... I, too, have heard of many people complaining of dengue, but rarely do they go to a doctor. Someone who develops fever and musculo-skeletal pain may assume it is dengue. I did hear at one point that the lab tests for dengue weren't available on island, but that is old hearsay. Read especially the section about problems in public health on the link above...

OK, East Ender, I'll check this link. I used to live in Cleveland, which has some of the best hospitals in the world. I know I'm now in a place where health care is on par with what you find in very rural parts of the mainland. From now on, I take Deet into the forest on the weekends.

Three out of six went to the Dr and had it confirmed. One spent a week in the hospital. I had never heard of it until 2 weeks ago, so I only know they described the very symptoms I have seen posted.

Abbi

Thanks for all of the replies! I am really escited about my relocation to the islands, BUT I have to admit that Dengue fever is my only reservation... For those of you who have contracted it can anyone say that it wasn't so bad? What were the symptoms you all experienced, if you don't mind saying. Was it more of a muscle/skeletal problem with fever? Or like a stomach/gasterolintestinal problem with constant nausea and vomiting?

Thanks for any input, i haven't heard any specific symptoms from someone who has contracted it besides the feeling that your bones are breaking and a pounding headache.

thanks!