Tiger mosquitoes are advancing in Flanders: the Healthcare Department calls on them to be reported and breeding sites removed

Tiger mosquitoes are jet black with white stripes on their body and legs, they are barely half a centimeter in size. They are very aggressive biters and are active during the day, unlike the well-known native mosquitoes. Many people have a stronger or allergic reaction to tiger mosquito bites. You can find a photo of a tiger mosquito on the website https://muggensurveillance.be/tijgermug.

Tiger mosquitoes can also transmit a number of tropical diseases, such as dengue and chikungunya. Every year, several hundred travelers return home with such diseases. If a tiger mosquito bites a sick person, the mosquito can transmit the disease to another healthy person during its next blood meal. Fortunately, the chance of transmission in Belgium is currently still very small. It is important to combat the mosquito and thus limit hibernation and the number of mosquitoes.

Everyone can contribute to this:

• Report tiger mosquitoes: Take a photo and report it on the mosquito surveillance website or via the Mosquito Surveillance app. By reporting tiger mosquitoes, they can be controlled.
• Remove breeding grounds: tiger mosquitoes breed in water. A plant bowl with a little water, a rain barrel or a bucket in the garden are perfect breeding grounds.
  • Now give all pots, bowls, rain barrel and gutter a good scrubbing. The tiger mosquito hibernates as an egg on the walls just above the water surface.
  • Cover rain barrels with mosquito netting.
  • Make it a habit to change the water in plant dishes, pots, buckets or watering cans weekly. Don’t pour that water from your lawn into the drain. Tiger mosquito larvae survive in sewage but die without water.
• Provide mosquito eaters in the garden: frogs, salamanders, water beetles, swifts, bats, dragonflies, wasps and damselflies eat (tiger) mosquitoes. With the right garden design, these mosquito eaters will find a place. Avoid poisons such as the use of pesticides in the garden that will scare away these mosquito eaters.
• Don’t give the tiger mosquito a ride. Tiger mosquitoes are active hunters, they follow people into their car or truck. That’s how they come here, even from the south of France.

It is impossible to keep the tiger mosquito completely out in Flanders, but we can delay its arrival and spread as much as possible with proper monitoring, control and prevention such as removing breeding grounds. In municipalities with small populations, we can still limit the numbers by carrying out all preventive actions properly and in a timely manner. And for the water that cannot be removed, a biological larval killing agent can be used where necessary.