Household expenditure on control of urban mosquitoes Aedes albopictus and Culex pipiens in Emilia-Romagna, Northern Italy.

Background: In 2007, the first outbreak of Chikungunya in Italy generated great alarm, highlighting the health risks caused by exotic species recently introduced in Europe and the need to strengthen control actions against the vectors. Besides health risks, mosquitoes cause nuisance, and citizens are required to adopt control measures. While the economic aspects of mosquito control by public agencies have been investigated, the scientific literature on the costs of mosquito protection incurred by families is scarce.

Egg data validation in quantitative monitoring of in Emilia-Romagna region, Italy.

The monitoring of urban species is usually conducted by ovitraps, which can provide a good estimate of population density at low cost and relatively easy management. When the monitoring network is managed by many operators, as in the case of the Emilia-Romagna regional plan, it becomes necessary to develop a quality control methodology capable of highlighting the possible data incoherency and ensuring that the monitoring system provides reliable data.This paper presents the procedure applied in the egg counting phase as developed in Emilia-Romagna in order to check the data quality and validate the data before being included in the database.

Quality control and data validation procedure in large-scale quantitative monitoring of mosquito density: the case of Aedes albopictus in Emilia-Romagna region, Italy.

The risk of local transmission of chikungunya, dengue, and Zika viruses from viremic travelers arriving from affected areas is a real possibility in southern Europe, due to the large presence of the vector Aedes albopictus. The first chikungunya outbreak in Europe occurred in the Emilia-Romagna region, Italy, in 2007, prompting the regional public health department to implement an Ae. albopictus monitoring and control plan.