Brazil Establishing Factory For Mosquito
The factory will produce up to five billion mosquitoes each year, each of which will be infected with a bacterium, called Wolbachia. These infected mosquitoes (all Aedes aegypti) will be released in cities across Brazil; they’ll breed with their wild counterparts and pass the microbe to their offspring. Mosquitoes infected with Wolbachia have a reduced ability to transmit viruses to people. Cases of dengue and Zika will slowly fall.
Brazil is building a giant mosquito Factory to combat Dengue Fever. This is actually put on by the world mosquito program they are a global non-profit who’s been operating for. I believe over a decade specifically to fight mosquito-borne illnesses and they do so by utilizing wolbachia which is a type of bacteria and this is a method that they’ve actually been doing for quite a while they have several published papers that look at both laboratory results as well as field studies to determine the efficacy of using. This bacteria for uh mosquito-borne diseases and they found that in the lab. The wolbachia can actually be almost 100 percent effective in stopping mosquito-borne transmission. By understanding is that it essentially out competes other bacteria other viruses other diseases. So the ones that are harmful to us like Dengue yellow fever zika et cetera Etc just can’t survive in the populations.
Current Controlling Method in Brazil
Brazil is some of the highest rates of dengue fever in the world. There are several million cases almost every year. Over a five-year span it is massive problem and currently the way that most mosquito control methods are done is through chemical insecticides and I say chemical insecticides not to say that chemicals are bad but that’s just the form of delivery and in the United States it is often through this method called naled which is an insecticide that has been registered in the United States since 1959. As of record it is actually applied to about 16 million Acres every single year in order to specifically control mosquito populations.
Side Effects
However what the people at the world mosquito program are getting at is that we do not need to mass spray insecticides in order to control an insect that is harmful to human health instead we can use bacteria well back yeah and at first. I know you might be thinking well isn’t that a problem are we introducing a bacteria out into the wild where it could have potential negative side effects. What is going to happen if it spreads to other organisms? What is the potential side effects of this organism? We of course have seen Jurassic Park. We’ve of course been inundated with science fiction movies where a bacteria goes haywire and takes over the brains of humanity but according to reports from the CDC mosquitoes with wolbachia do not really pose that much of an issue because 6 out of ten of all types of insects already have we’ll back you. It’s already present in many other taxes so it’s not really introducing a new bacteria out of the wild. It’s rather utilizing one that is already found and is relatively inconsequential and putting it into mosquitoes who don’t really have all back if for whatever reason.
So what we’re kind of doing is putting up sick mosquitoes if you want to you know reduce it down to that way but this is such a fascinating technology it exists at this cutting age modern conservation where we’re not eradicating Wildlife for conservation anymore instead we are using the tools found in nature modifying them in a beneficial way for both nature and for humans.
