Fly-borne disease

DID YOU KNOW?

As long ago as 1909, Dr JTC Nash, the county medical officer of Norfolk, discovered that house flies are carriers of disease.

He identified epidemic diarrhoea as the main disease spread by flies, and his research showed that infants were the most vulnerable group.

More than a century later, and with rather more advanced methods, a study in Bangladesh found the same thing.

Stored food that was to be eaten by young children was frequently contaminated with pathogenic strains of E. coli that matched the strains carried by flies caught in the same households.