The world’s largest mosquito factory is being built in Brazil with the aim of protecting up to 70 million people from viruses such as dengue.  

The World Mosquito Program (WMP), a non-profit, says the facility will produce and release mosquitoes infected with bacteria that stops them from transmitting viruses. Details about the project were recently published in the journal Nature.

Up to five billion mosquitoes will be released in urban areas of Brazil each year over the next decade. The insects will serve as a counter mechanism against the spread of the disease.

A partnership with the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation, a Brazilian science body in Rio de Janeiro, the mosquito farm is expected to start operating in 2024, but its location is yet to be determined.

WMP head Scott O’Neill, a microbiologist at Monash University in Australia, told Nature the facility would be the largest of its kind to produce mosquitoes infected with the Wolbachia bacteria.

“And it will allow us in a short period of time to cover more people than in any other country,” O’Neill added.

Resurgence

Dengue re-emerged in Brazil in 1981 after an absence of more than two decades. Over the next 30 years, seven million cases have been reported in the country – more than anywhere else in the world.

Brazil has also been severely affected by outbreaks of Zika virus and chikungunya.

Aedes aegypti, better known as the yellow fever mosquito, carries viruses that cause dengue, yellow fever and chikungunya – which it transmits through bites.

The species thrives in wet places and coastal areas that serve as their breeding habitats.

Researchers in Australia, Brazil, Colombia, Indonesia and Vietnam have already tested the release of modified mosquitos – with trials indicating the transmission of dengue can be reduced by up to 77 percent.

However the technology has never before been tested on a massive scale.

Source: RFI

BDST: 1905 HRS, APR 22, 2023
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