AVIAN INFLUENZA (BIRD FLU) TESTED AND PASSED

WEILS DISEASE BREAKOUT HAS BEEN TESTED & PASSED TO KILL BY THE PUBLIC HEALTH LABORATORIES

A dramatic rise in the number of people reporting rats in their homes has been put down to the rodents fleeing wintry weather outside.
Recent cold weather and flooding is believed to have led the disease-carrying rodents to shelter indoors.

And the situation is only going to get worse because of the increase in the rat population thanks to a succession of milder winters, according to pest controllers.

Heavy rainfall is believed to have driven rats out from the sewers. Last year calls to pest controllers rose by 18%.

But this figure will increase by a further 20% this year, according to John Davison, secretary of the National Pest Technicians Association.

Warm shelter

"Rats like to have somewhere that's dry and sheltered to nest.

"They're not bothered by water but they don't want to live in it 24 hours a day," he said.

"The recent flooding will be pushing them to places inhabited by humans, with more going into houses or farm buildings."

He said that in the last few weeks, especially two or three days after a flood, the association had noticed an increase in complaints.

And pest controllers tended to find three or four rats at a time. "When we see an infestation it's usually quite an impressive one," he said.

He put the increase down to factors including global warming and extra litter.

Around 60% of the rodents carry Weil's disease, he added, which causes flu-like symptoms or in more serious cases kidney and heart failure, he added.

2,000 offspring

The average pair of rats can produce 2,000 offspring a year, although it was usually a quarter of this number, according to rat expert Stephen Battersby.

"I would think there is one rat for every person in the UK," he said.

But he said the colder weather would have killed some of the young rats, said Mr Battersby, who is a research fellow at the University of Surrey's Robens Centre for Public and Environmental Health.

The average rat grows to a size of around 12 inches.

Severe flood warnings were in place in many parts of the UK for several days this week following another spate of heavy rainfall.

Kent and Yorkshire were among the worst affected areas this week as rivers burst their banks.

News Data Base

Disease spread by rats is likely to become an increasing problem as the developing world becomes ever more urbanised, experts have warned.
Every day nearly four million rats are born world-wise - ten for every human.

They are known to carry nearly 70 diseases, but it is suspected actually harbour a lot more.
A meeting of experts in Canberra, Australia, heard on Monday that the rodents pose a growing threat to public health.

Dr Lyn Hinds, of Australia's Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation, told the conference: "Rats are a reservoir of disease, the sleeping giants of disease in the world.

"It is more likely than ever that we will have greater levels of debilitating diseases caused by rats with the increased density of human populations."

Among the diseases that rats are known to carry are cholera, typhus, bubonic plague and leptospirosis, a bacterial illness spread by their urine contaminating water or food.

Dr Hinds said 6,000 cases of leptospirosis were diagnosed in Thailand alone in 2000, killing 350 people.

However, researchers say many more deaths should have been attributed to rats but were classified as unknown fever.

The same disease killed nearly 60 people in the Indian state of Kerala last summer.

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