- WEST LAKE WORTH -- Granville
Green stood on a raised concrete median at an intersection west of Lake
Worth on Thursday with a sign around his neck pleading for nickels, dimes
-- anything to help him buy medicine to treat his lingering symptoms of
malaria.
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- Green, 45, who said he was diagnosed with the disease
last week, had a bottle of primaquine phosphate -- malaria medicine --
that had been prescribed to him. But he didn't have anything to ease the
aches and pains the disease causes in his joints, he said.
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- "I feel better but I'm not up to par like I should
be," he said. "It wears down your system."
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- Green said he was the fourth of seven people in Palm
Beach County to have been diagnosed with malaria this month, prompting
a government effort to eradicate the disease and making area residents
nervous.
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- The summer outbreaks of malaria in Palm Beach County,
West Nile virus in South Florida and the Panhandle and encephalitis in
Central Florida have made this year the worst in a decade for mosquito
illnesses, according to state figures.
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- West of Lake Worth, many residents say they are taking
the county Health Department's advice to avoid mosquito bites: avoid being
outdoors at dawn and dusk, wear long sleeves and pants if outdoors, use
mosquito repellent with DEET and eliminate standing water where bugs breed.
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- At Lake Worth Memory Gardens, near Kirk Road and 10th
Avenue North, workers have fogged the graveyard and wear bug spray when
working outdoors, said assistant superintendent Ralph Maffeo, while watching
a crew dig a grave.
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- The cemetery also offers insect repellent for mourners,
Maffeo said.
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- "That way they can spray and come and do what they
got to do," he said.
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- Tiny Kingdom, a private preschool near Haverhill Road
and 10th Avenue North, doesn't let its students onto the playground in
the evenings anymore for fear of mosquitoes, said school spokeswoman Martha
Bereicua. The preschool asked parents to send bug spray to school with
their children for teachers to apply, she said.
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- The folks at Jackie and Lori's Cafe, a little restaurant
in a strip mall west of Lake Worth, said they also were doing what they
could to avoid being bitten by bugs.
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- "I don't go out at night. I don't let my [6-year-old]
son go out, either. I got bit by a mosquito and I was dying, freaking out,"
said server Lisa Banko, 35, of West Palm Beach.
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- Customer Rodney Yarborough, 69, of West Palm Beach said
he'd stopped going to the park and to evening ball games for fear of catching
malaria
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- "I think it's pretty serious. Every day there's
a new case," Yarborough said.
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- Green knows just how serious the situation is. But, like
many homeless people, there aren't many precautions he can take to keep
from being bitten by bugs. He has no home to stay inside of in the mornings
and evenings and he says he can't afford bug spray.
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- To ease such problems, teams from the Health Department
and homeless programs have been visiting soup kitchens and social agencies
in Palm Beach County, trying to preach protection to street people -- including
131 cases of donated bug spray.
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- Green said the efforts were starting to work. Despite
the hubbub, not everyone is nervous about catching malaria.
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- "If I worried about everything, I'd never leave
the house," said Lori Manosh, 33, co-owner of Jackie and Lori's, who
lives west of West Palm Beach.
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- Perhaps in part because they weren't thinking much about
it and weren't taking correct precautions, at least 24 people have caught
mosquito-borne diseases statewide so far this year, with the peak of mosquito
season still ahead in September and October.
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- As of this date during mosquito-borne outbreaks last
year and in 1990, there had been only two human cases, according to Florida
Department of Health figures.
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- "We're definitely ahead of where we were last year
and in the past. It looks like we may be heading that direction" of
an outbreak year, said Carina Blackmore, a mosquito-disease expert for
the state Health Department.
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- "But we still have the possibility of having a very
dry September and October that will knock this outbreak off its track,"
Blackmore said. "We still have the high season ahead of us. People
really need to take the precautions against mosquito bites."
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- Last year, 37 Floridians contracted West Nile and related
diseases, though only two were in South Florida. That was the biggest mosquito-borne
outbreak since the St. Louis encephalitis scare of 1990, when more than
200 people got sick and eight died, starting in September. That had been
the biggest outbreak since 1962.
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- - Health Writer Bob LaMendola contributed to this report.
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- Copyright © 2003, South Florida Sun-Sentinel
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- http://www.sun-sentinel.com
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