Brazil and the Tropics

If you’re going to Brazil this year, or any other tropical destination, then the following information about mosquitoes is essential reading. Mosquitoes will be having a feeding frenzy with all the fresh tourist blood – and you definitely want to avoid being on the menu!

For starters, take anything your average GP or practice nurse tells you about DEET with a pinch of salt, there are certain mosquitoes that are completely resistant to it – not to mention the many safety concerns. incognito® spray and roll-ons are the only mosquito repellents clinically proven to protect against malaria. What’s more, the clinical study was carried out in South America (on 4006 individuals) by the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and the results were published in the British Medical Journal. No DEET-based product can make these claims.

For the main course, clean yourself properly! Most of us take a shower, bath or strip-wash daily with products bought off the shelf – these contain attractants to insects and you are already attractive enough… to mozzies! Even if you’re using a simple soap or shower gel that has no discernible smell to you or I, these toiletries can enable a mosquito to detect you as fresh fillet steak from up to a mile away: because they let your full body odour waft into the air. This is why we manufacture a special hair and body wash along with 2 soaps, these all contain Organic Java citronella as well as other actives that mask your scent.

How we wash strongly influences our attractiveness to mosquitoes and other biting and stinging insects, so by using Java citronella-based preparations to scrub yourself, you have an unprecedented level of protection and it will make your insect repellent last longer as you shouldn’t need as much. Java citronella is 2-3 times more powerful than ordinary citronella because it only grows on the island of Java and thus, insects are not used to it.

For dessert, I can highly recommend an assortment of travel accessories that will further mask or reduce your smell. This luxurious, creamy, moisturiser again contains organic Java citronella and helps shield you from all insects.

In addition incognito® citronella deodorant is the first crystal stick to contain an additive; because of the exothermic reaction in manufacturing it has only a subtle aroma to humans, but is off-putting to mozzies! Again, ordinary deodorants and anti-perspirants can attract insects towards you.

There is a lot of talk about a 2 year trial releasing transgenic or genetically modified (GM) mosquitoes into Brazil, but this will not solve the  malaria problem as the campaign is targeted towards Aedes aegypti mosquitoes that bite from dawn to dusk and carry dengue. Furthermore,  there are many concerns about releasing mosquitoes with a deadly flaw into the wild, not least because another, even more troublesome  species, could take the Asian Tiger mosquitoes’ place.

The bottom line is that in order to protect yourself from mosquitoes and the diseases that they carry in tropical countries you need to take a number of precautions, not just rock up in Rio or any other tropical destination with a single repellent spray!

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION ON BRAZIL CLICK HERE