Chile Forum

I was browsing the Curico -town website and came across this warning for this Hanta Virus that rats spread. Anybody have inside info on this? How many cases have there been so far? Anything I should worry about if moving to Curico area?

Here's the summary on it from CuricoChile.com :

Protéjase del HANTA

Es un virus que vive en el ratón silvestre de cola larga y que al transmitirse al hombre produce una enfermedad que puede ser mortal. Está presente en casi todos los países del mundo. Produce fiebre con insuficiencia respiratoria, provocando la muerte del 50% de los infectados. Para esta enfermedad no existe cura ni vacuna. Mientras más rápido se reciba atención médica, más alta es la posibilidad de recuperación.

Not a strange virus.. its in MANY parts of the world.. includint the U.S.A, Canada, parts of Europe and South America.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hantavirus

yea, in the southwest U.S. it is very very common, and everyone knows what to do about it. The cases are few and far between however, relative to a lot of other things.

1. Watch out for places that mice would frequent. It is in their droppings. For example, cleaning out a cabin or old shed that has been closed for a while. Put on a mask and gloves, let the place air out, use bleach or other strong cleaners.

2. If you can, just the presence of cat will likely be sufficient to convince the mice to move on to greener pastures.

3. Be specially vigilant in years with heavy rain fall, or another situations that would cause the mouse population to explode. They often go through cycles.

Mostly it comes down to not living with mice. Keep the mice away, and the hanta goes with them.

Good advice here, Loreleiah. Look out for the "corner spider", too -- deadly.

I might add that, although (as the Spanish excerpt notes) the hanta virus is present in most countries (perhaps not "casi todos", however), it is both more common and (perhaps because of the remoteness of many a thinly populated area) seemingly more deadly in Chile. I think that I saw or heard statistics on this -- in Chile! -- some years ago: the proportion of deaths from hanta in Chile was among the three or four highest in the world, if I remember correctly.

I'll take la araña de rincón (corner spider) and hanta virus to any of the MULTITUDE of deadly animals, reptiles, insects and other forms of life found in Australia..

Probably with good cause, Tony. As I've never been to Australia, I really don't know; I simply think of the terrible experience my brother went through a causa del rincón -- and hope that no one else need go through it.

Yeh, people here are terrified of it.. don't get me wrong its definitely something to be cautious about in Chile..


The effects of a "corner spider's" bite.

yea, I think a lot of the hanta deaths in Chile are more a matter of lack of public education campaigns in the rural areas. The health departments have a way for example of wasting money on flyers for tourist in Vina del Mar office, and not getting them out to farmers in more remote areas that are more likely to encounter hanta.

Still, the biggest waist and least effective health campaign I have ever seen was in the Temuco SENATOR tourism office. They had on their desk stacks of really expensive full color brochures warning people traveling to Chile about SARS. Which is nice, except it was over 5 years and the wrong continent after the SARS outbreak was over.

Last year, they banned fly fishermen from importing their fly's at customs because of bird flue. It took about 5 months of convincing to explain that the materials fly fishermen use are extremely well processed, clean, and have no blood on them. Many are 100% synthetic.

A lot of those public health awareness campaigns in Chile have paranoid / ignorant Santiago bureaucrats written all over the way they are executed in the field.

On the other hand, one of Chile's big international health success stories is the elimination of Chagas. The second country in South America to be declared Chagas free.
http://www.who.int/tdr/publications/tdr ... chagas.htm

As for the cornor spider, I think I have seen one in Temuco. We have a lot of spiders around the yard (most are just big and scary looking). I found if I blast the immediate area around the house about once or twice a year, their food moves back out in to the garden and all the spiders with them. I try to schedule my spraying when they are laying their eggs. Keeps the overall population for the year down to a manageable level, and I only have to spray once.

I don't like to upset the natural balance of my garden, just like to hit them sufficiently to put a buffer zone between my living space and theirs. That healthy ring of spiders around my gate and yard seems to keep the ant population and other bugs from moving in to the house.

ouch. Where did I put my Raid can?

Holy crap, that spider image posted is disturbing!

Hopefully my two cats will keep the Hanta away unless the cats eat the mice and contract it that way, that may not be so good.

The spiders I've encountered so far here in the desert have been black widows, brown recluse and some other big nasty looking ones. We've also found scorpions, lizards and several species of snakes around the yard and in front of our doorway.

So what other creepy, poisonous insects are there around in Chile besides that nasty spider that I should watch out for?

Spencer-Admin guy, you mention you have a garden.. Do you live outside of town in Temuco? From all the houses I was looking at in there, all seemed urban and no garden around. Maybe I was looking in wrong parts of town? Would kill for a garden!

I think we have covered just about all the creepy crawlies in Chile. There are couple of nasty ones, but we are not say Australia or Brazil in terms of stingy things.

We have a fairly small garden as gringo gardens go. We are in some of the older houses, so they had bigger back yards and even a bit of front yard over what is packed in to the newer track homes.

It does not get very good light throughout the say, or I would grow vegetables. We do however have some nice flowers, some very mature trees, roses, and very large hedge that hides a rather ugly back concrete wall (home to all the spiders). We do have a two foot Araucaria tree growing (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Araucaria). It will be about the size of the house in another 1,000 years.

Out on the edge of Temuco you can get much larger yards. Many houses have 5,000 square meter lots or more. If you go outside the town proper, most rural land can not be subdivided smaller than 5,000 square meters unless it is rezoned. So, big yards are the norm.