West nile here to stay.

• Author: Schwab, Robert
• Position: On Colorado

RICK DERKSEN, A 51-YEAR-OLD WAREHOUSE WORKER FROM LONGMONT, died at the end of March, closing the book on the 2003 West Nile Virus outbreak in Colorado. He was the 61st person in the state to die because of the mosquito-borne disease. Hundreds of others suffered a polio-like paralysis that even now has left some disabled.

But people are taking the disease more seriously now, says John Pape, the state's leading West Nile epidemiologist, and one of the first to raise an early warning of the deadly season last year.

"A lot of communities have taken our message to heart and are looking at ways to respond, including looking at mosquito control," said Pape as he left a conference in Arizona where he gave a keynote address to warn other public health officials to "pay attention ... and be prepared to respond" if surveillance measures show the virus is cropping up in birds and bugs and animals.

Pape doesn't make precise predictions about West Nile.

"The only thing we can predict for certain is that we're going to see West Nile Virus activity this year and that we're going to see it pretty much statewide," he said.

"In terms of being able to predict severity, that becomes a little more tricky because it's such a complex ecology ... (the way) this virus works. It's based on things like weather. For instance, if you could tell me what the weather is going to be like in May, June and July, in terms of temperature, precipitation, I could get a little better feel for it, but those kinds of things we can't predict."

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Several communities around the state, Pape said, have held elections to expand their mosquito-control districts or increase funding for mosquito abatement and "everyone of those passed that I'm aware of," he said. But he also said the primary preventative is personal responsibility for avoiding being bitten by a mosquito.

"Use repellant, fix the screens, drain standing water in the puddles around your home," said Pape, who is with the Colorado...