Modified mosquitoes may save millions more lives in Latin America
Modified mosquitoes may save millions more lives in Latin America
Tags: Dengue, Genetically modified mosquitoes, South/Central AmericaMarina E. Franco, Axios, 2024.
A program that uses genetically engineered mosquitoes in Brazil, Colombia and Mexico to reduce the prevalence of diseases that can be fatal may soon serve millions more people.
Why it matters: Outbreaks of dengue, chikungunya, zika and yellow fever —diseases carried by the Aedes aegypti mosquito —have long hit the Americas and other tropical regions hard.
- Climate change has worsened the spread of these diseases, experts say, as rising temperatures favor the life cycle of the mosquitoes and their proliferation in more areas — including, increasingly, the U.S.
- These diseases also tend to affect impoverished regions where a lack of health care options mean mosquito bites can become deadly.
- Diseases such as dengue “feed on poverty and inequity, and they fuel it also,” World Health Organization chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said last week during an event in Brazil.