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MOSQUITO

Sweden villagers trapped by invasion of aggressive mosquitos

The inhabitants of a village in Western Sweden have been practically trapped in their houses for nearly two weeks after an invasion of aggressive floodwater mosquitos.

Sweden villagers trapped by invasion of aggressive mosquitos
Jessica Helinder Moberg's daughter after a savaging by mosquitos last year. Photo: Jessica Helinder Moberg
The people of Deje, a village of 2,000 in Värmland, are so desperate that on Monday they reported their local municipality for failing to do enough to ease the problem. 
 
“We run to the car and run back into the house. The children won’t go out and play,” Jessica Helinder Moberg told The Local.  “Even the animals don’t want to go out. Our dogs run on their front legs and pee at the same time.” 
 
Unusually heavy snowfall this winter led to spring floods which created the perfect conditions for the mosquitos along the Klarälven, a river that flows through Norway and Sweden and into Lake Vänern. 
 
Apart from when the wind is blowing, it takes only minutes outside to become covered if big red bite marks. 
 
“We all get big red marks from the mosquitos,” Moberg said. “Our children find it hard to sleep at night because they’re so itchy.” 
 
Moberg said she had decided to report the local Forshaga municipality to Sweden’s Parliamentary Ombdusman along with 50 other residents because they had done nothing, despite complaints about mosquitos every year. 
 
“They’ve been promising to spray the area for seven years, but so far nothing has happened,” she said. 
 
Per Lawén, chairman of the country council, told Sweden's Aftonbladet newspaper, that he was in “a dialogue” with Jan Lundström, whose company Nedab, specialises in biological mosquito control. 
 
Lundström has said he will not work for Forshaga until the municipality apologises for its poor cooperation when he was contracted to fight mosquitos for them in 2009. 
 
“The officials behaved appallingly badly and did nothing that I told them to do,” Lundström told the newspaper. “And the municipality politicians didn't want to speak to me. I have lost any wish to work with them.” 
 

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