Singapore unveils a state-of-the-art of mosquito breeding, facility to step up its fight against mosquito-borne diseases.
By Dr. Maria Kausa
In Singapore, the government and researchers are serious about the opposing challenge of climate change with other challenges that are disturbing mother Nature, the control of Dengue is not as simple as it seems. Because climate change is increasing the outbreak of Dengue. The scientists cannot do just more the same. The improvement in making facility at this new capability will be accomplished through the integration of mechanized technologies, such as larvae and pupae counters, high throughout larvae, rearing schemes, and sex classifiers for mosquitoes. It is male and female mosquito sorters.
The mosquitoes infected with the Dengue virus are the main cause of Dengue fever in humans and this is a fatal condition. In most parts of the country Dengue fever cases are found to be the highest as compared to any other infection-causing fatality in humans. The Southeast Asian Region of Singapore with a population of 5.7 million has reported Dengue fever cases approximately reaching 26,000 in a recent study. This number is more than the previous records where 22000 cases were the highest on the recorded data in 2013. Other than Dengue infection, the ratio of disease and mortality is very low with 20 deaths in a year. These 20 deaths caused internal hemorrhages with a shock-like condition. Even this country remained free of the Novel Coronavirus with a maximum of 27 deaths in the whole country. But the researchers are doing their best to control the mosquitoes involved in Dengue transmission in the human population.
During the pandemic of Covid-19, the breeding site of mosquitoes remained undisturbed due to which the mosquito’s fecundity reached its peak level. This peak in mosquitos’ population has led to Dengue fever outbreak in the whole country with a good fatality ratio.
Everybody wants to kill mosquitoes. But in Singapore, they create mosquitoes in millions and spread them freely in the atmosphere to fly freely in the country. The first thing in your mind comes is that why are they doing this and did they go crazy.
Well, they did not!!!
For the first time, I want to show you the four exciting journeys of how Singapore fights mosquitoes.
For those who do not know mosquitoes are annoying as well as they are deadly. Many female mosquitoes have Dengue Virus. and just like Malaria, you can get Dengue from the bite of a mosquito and in severe cases, you could die which means fifty and five hundred million people get Dengue every year and ten to twenty thousand people die from a mosquito bite.
So, if you want to eliminate Dengue, you must kill all the Dengue mosquitoes everywhere. But it is hard to find mosquitoes and therefore, hard to kill.
So, how do you stop mosquitoes???
Well, a team of scientists in Singapore originated an amazing idea. What if we sojourn mosquitoes from having offspring????
And
That is exactly what they did. They created a new type of mosquitoes, very strong that they can go out and find over bad mosquitoes and stop them from having babies. So apparently, a mosquito nursing room is a home for good mosquitoes. And there are hundreds of thousands of mosquitoes waiting to be released to the outside world.
This is as crazy as it sounds.
This new mosquito does not bite you not harm you at all.
How to check if these mosquitoes truly do not bite or hurt? If you put your hands inside the mosquito room or web. The mosquitoes will not bite you. if this good mosquito falls in love with this bad mosquito. The bad mosquito will no longer be able to have kids.
No new babies, no new mosquitoes.
Genius!
So, Singapore created millions of these good mosquitoes and put them in a mosquito gun & blasted them. To neighborhood, rooftops, gardens, everywhere. The good mosquitoes were made with the bad ones and they could not be able to reproduce. In no time, all mosquitoes, good and bad will die naturally without having any kids.
Whoever said, “Love kills” was not wrong. Because this is literally how Singapore is fighting the Dengue virus.
Dengue mosquitoes drop significantly by more than 90 percent and saved many residents from the virus threat. This ingenious method is such a success that they are opening mosquito factories. Singapore is just fighting against the Dengue virus. This factory is so advanced that it can create tens of thousands of good mosquitoes every single day.
Everybody needs to see this challenge.
World’s biggest problem can be fixed.
You just need a little bit of fraternity with a mosquito gun.
Authors:
- Dr. Maria Kausar, M.Phil. Parasitology from University of Agriculture Faisalabad.
- Dr. Muhammad Sohail Sajid, Chairman Dept. of Parasitology at University of Agriculture Faisalabad.
- Dr. Kashif Hussain, PhD Parasitology, University of Agriculture Faisalabad.