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Table of Contents
India was looking at newer strategies to combat dengue .
World Health Organization, had cited ongoing research on a bacterium called wolbachia that, if introduced in mosquitoes, could stop disease-spreading viruses from growing and spreading.
•Today, the experiment has proved remarkably effective in a small town in Australia, preventing fresh outbreaks of dengue.?
• Wolbachia is a tiny bacterium that is present in up to 60% of all species of insects, including several mosquito species, but not usually in the Aedes aegypti mosquito, the primary species responsible for transmitting dengue, chikungunya and Zika.
• Wolbachia is one of the world’s most common parasitic microbes and possibly the most common reproductive parasite in the biosphere. The experiment looked at whether introducing wolbachia in Aedes aegypti could indeed reduce their ability to transmit these diseases.
EXPERIMENT
• Australian researchers were able to protect the 1.87 lakh population of Townsville, Queensland, from dengue for the last four years.
• Mosquitoes were specially bred to carry wolbachia and were let loose over 66 square km in places where they could naturally breed.
• In the four monsoon seasons since these mosquitoes were introduced, dengue ceased to be a problem.
•When present in the mosquito, the viruses cannot replicate as well.
• So, small numbers of wolbachia-carrying mosquitoes are released in target areas.
•They then breed with wild mosquitoes and over time the percentage of mosquitoes carrying wolbachia grows until it remains high without the need for further releases,
• India connection
This is a safe and effective approach and needs to be tested at different settings in India.
•At the National Vector Borne Disease Control Programme, officials said this approach is being tested in India.
•Field testing, however, is still several years away as this approach needs to be tested in large cities where a large number of mosquitoes will require to be released.
•As of now, mosquito eggs with wolbachia have been imported and are being bred at the Vector Control Research Centre at Puducherry. .
•Years of laboratory and field research have shown that this method is safe for people, animals and the environment.
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