Public health pests like rats, mice, cockroaches, and fleas can spread disease to people by transmitting germs from their bodies or by crawling on dirty surfaces. They also contaminate food, causing typhoid and dysentery.
Effective Pezz Pest Control is essential to protect human health. Diseases transmitted by pests like mosquitoes, fleas, and ticks can impose significant costs on individuals and the health systems.

Rodents
Rodents are important components of terrestrial ecosystems, providing food for other species, recycling nutrients to promote plant growth, and dispersing seeds. In healthy ecosystems, predators and competition with other rodents keep populations in check. However, when habitats and ecosystems are disrupted or impacted by humans, rodents may become a significant public health problem, contributing to the spread of zoonotic diseases such as plague, hantavirus, and leptospirosis. In addition, rodents can introduce pathogens into drinking water by contaminating it with their urine and feces.
Poor urban socio-environmental conditions support rodent proliferation and contribute to human disease transmission through a variety of pathways such as bites, contamination of water and food supplies, direct contact with feces, and environmental sanitation deficits. Those living in such environments are often at high risk of vector-borne diseases which result in fatal or life-long symptoms and overburden health systems.
Local rodent control programs are a critical component of preventing the spread of zoonotic diseases, especially those transmitted by rodents. However, funding for these programs has remained constant or decreased over the past five years, and of the five programs that noted a decrease in funds, four significantly reduced their staffing and activities.
Over-dependence on non-locally adapted control methods primarily based on chemicals can lead to adverse side effects and become less effective over time. Therefore, the implementation of a more sustainable rodent control approach is needed. Such approaches should involve a multidisciplinary team of local stakeholders and community members to develop interventions that are sustainable and culturally acceptable. The results from this pilot case study should serve as a model for such an approach in many other disadvantaged urban communities across LMICs where rodent pests are associated with poor food and water security, environmental sanitation, and human health.
Mosquitoes
Across Africa, teams of scientists are waging war against mosquitoes that carry deadly pathogens. They are testing new insecticides and ingenious ways to deliver them. They are peering into windows at night, watching for the bugs that home in on sleeping people. They are interviewing moto-taxi drivers and goat herders about the mosquitoes that bite them, their babies, and their livestock.
The Anopheles mosquito (Anopheles gambiae) is the most important vector for the parasitic infection malaria, which sickens and kills more than 700 million people every year. It transmits several other pathogens, including dengue, yellow fever, West Nile Virus, and Zika.
Mosquitoes are holometabolous insects, meaning they go through a complete metamorphosis to become fully mature adults. They start their lives as eggs, hatch into larvae, and then pupate in a cocoon. Adult mosquitoes emerge from the cocoons to search for blood to feed their young and fuel their reproductive cycles.
Females of many species are attracted to warm-blooded animals, including humans, and use a variety of cues, such as exhaled carbon dioxide, body odors, and temperature and movement, to home in on potential targets. When a target is located, the mosquito stabs its mouthparts into the skin and sucks blood using its proboscis.
Some of the best methods to control mosquitoes involve preventing them from breeding in areas where they aren’t needed. This is known as integrated pest management or IPM. This approach emphasizes monitoring and scouting for mosquitoes, rather than treating an entire landscape, and includes things like emptying or regularly changing standing water in containers, such as flowerpots, pet dishes, bird baths, and outdoor containers. It also involves wearing long sleeves and pants when outdoors, and covering the skin with an EPA-registered repellent.
Cockroaches
Cockroaches are a common pest in homes and restaurants. They are highly adaptable and thrive in a variety of environments, including damp basements, greenhouses, kitchens, and rooms with sewer pipes or plumbing. They are active at night and tend to be found in places where food, water, warmth, and shelter are available.
In addition to being a nuisance, cockroaches can spread at least 33 kinds of bacteria and six kinds of parasitic worms, all of which can cause human disease. They pick up germs on the spines of their legs as they crawl through decaying matter and can then transfer these organisms to food that is subsequently eaten by humans.
Cockroach populations are especially high in food service areas, such as kitchens and break rooms. These areas are often full of trash, food scraps, and crumbs that provide a continuous source of nourishment for cockroaches. Vending machine areas, smoking areas, and emergency room waiting rooms can also provide cockroaches with a steady diet.
Female cockroaches produce eggs in well-formed cases called oothecae. Each ootheca may be held protruding from the mother’s body until hatching time is near, or it can be glued in protected places. Othecae may contain a few to 30 eggs arranged in two rows, each with a seam that bears a keel, or ridge.
Although cockroaches have been associated with bacteria throughout their evolution, their role in the dissemination of food-borne pathogens is not fully understood. Research has shown that cockroaches can disseminate potentially pathogenic bacteria via feces and other deposits, particularly members of the genus Lactobacillus, which flourish within specialized bacteriocytes in cockroaches (Blatta orientalis, Blatte. germanica, and Periplaneta americana). The order Rhizobiales and the family Acetobacteraceae have been found in cockroaches (Lampert et al. 2019).
Fleas
Fleas are small, wingless, flat insects with three pairs of legs. They are dark reddish-brown and can move quickly over the fur or feathers of their host animal. They can be difficult to see and may not be noticed until they bite. The mouthparts of fleas are long and curved, resembling a beak and being called a proboscis. They are used to draw blood during feeding and are very effective biters. Fleas are typically found on dogs, cats, rabbits, hamsters, rats, mice, and raccoons but will bite any warm-blooded mammal including humans.
Adult fleas are obligatory blood feeders and rely on their hosts to provide the energy they need for reproduction. During each blood meal, fleas cut the skin of their host using the specialized labral and lacinial styles of their mouthparts and extract blood from the capillaries. The amount of blood extracted during a single feeding event varies between species (C. felis engorges around 13.6 ul while X. cheopis only engorges 0.1-0.2 ul) and between male and female fleas.
Each flea goes through four life stages — egg, larva, pupa, and adult — with the larval and pupal phases developing away from the host animal. Pearly white eggs are dropped by adult fleas on or near their host animals where they hatch in 4 to 6 days into larvae that consume organic debris (mother flea feces, dry excrement, discarded hairs, etc.) for food and go through three molts over a period that can range from a week to many months.
Fleas can transmit germs that cause disease to people primarily by bites and through fecal contamination when infected flea feces are scratched into an open wound. The most common pathogen transmitted by fleas is bubonic plague, which is caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis. Fleas can also carry the bacteria that cause typhus, tularemia, and other diseases associated with bacterial infections of the skin.
Bedbugs
Bed bugs are hematophagous (blood-feeding) insects that are widely distributed worldwide. They have become a significant public health problem due to their increased resistance to chemical control agents. They feed nocturnally on the exposed skin of humans and can cause allergic reactions in their host. These bites can range from no reaction or a single bite mark to, in rare cases, a severe whole-body reaction called anaphylaxis. Bed bug infestations are commonly reported in apartment buildings, hotels, and private homes. These pests can spread between rooms and floors through active dispersal or passive dispersal. They can also travel between sites through human mediation, such as in luggage or furniture.
Bed bug infestations are difficult to eradicate once established. The key to prevention is good housekeeping, which includes frequent washing of linens, bedding, and curtains in hot water and putting these items through a dryer on the highest heat setting for 30 minutes. In addition, a zippered mattress cover and box spring covers are recommended to prevent the bugs from entering or exiting a sleeping area. Repairing cracks in plaster, peeling wallpaper, and sealing openings around pipes or wires are additional measures to prevent them from entering the home.
If a home is infested with bed bugs, a qualified pest control operator should be called to conduct treatment. Infestations can be controlled with pesticides that are registered to kill bedbugs and have low toxicity to humans. However, repeated visits may be necessary to ensure that all stages of the bugs are dead. It is important that a qualified pest control operator inspects the property before applying any insecticides, and only uses pesticides that are registered for use to control bedbugs.