Audience Assignment 1: Dengue Fever

Guidelines:

From the information provided below and the guidelines we went over in class, write a two page description aimed at an audience of intelligent adults with limited literacy (about a first grade education). See below for a description of the scenario, your purpose, and information about the dengue virus and the Aedes aegypti mosquito vector.

Scenario:

Suppose you are traveling through the south-east Asian country of Indonesia and you happen upon a remote, tropical, inland village. The townspeople are successful farmers. They have a varied diet including chicken and pigs raised around the village and water troughs for their animals. There are also many outside buckets, trash cans, and old tires holding stagnant water from the daily rain showers. The people frequently congregate outside to visit just before sunset. Many of the villagers suffer from a disease with a sudden high fever, a severe headache, and aching legs and arms. Most people recover after a couple of weeks. Occasionally, someone also has bleeding from the nose and mouth, severe internal pain, and dies. You correctly suspect the people are suffering from an outbreak of dengue.

Purpose:

Explain to the people what is happening to them, how they are getting the disease, and what they might do to combat the disease. Remember, these people are intelligent but have no more science education than a first grade child in the USA.

Some general information about dengue: Dengue is caused by a mosquito-borne virus transmitted by the bite of an infected mosquito which has previously bitten an infected person. The mosquito, Aedes aegypti, is active just after sunrise and before sunset and breeds in stagnant water.