vlad.tribnet.com / Issue #147 / Social life / Reading article...

The following is a letter from the city's chief sanitary physician to Mayor Victor Cherepkov. For a list of the city's most rat-infested sites, see below.

The City Sanitary-Epidemiological Surveillance Center would like to advise you that due to the absence of finances and contracts signed for 1997, measures to eliminate rodents have not been carried out at the following municipal structures:

• Educational facilities - since June 1, 1996
  
• Health facilities - since January 1, 1997
  
• City housing - since January 1, 1997.

The above-mentioned measures are regarded as primary anti-epidemiological and sanitary-prophylactic steps for preventing the spread and decreasing the number of infectious diseases caused by rodents. This year, Vladivostok is experiencing the growth of rodent-caused diseases among the city citizens including children by 100 percent compared with the same period last year.

Taking into account the reproductive biology of rodents (one rodent couple annually reproduces up to 1,000 offspring), the systematic carrying out of anti-rodent measures has to be taken to achieve decrease in the number of rodents at the municipal facilities and in the number of rodent-caused diseases. So managers of the municipal structures should sign contracts to have such measures undertaken. And it is necessary to provide financing for them.

Chief Sanitary Physician of Vladivostok
T.I. Vershkova