Modified mosquitoes may save millions more lives in Latin America

Modified mosquitoes may save millions more lives in Latin America

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Marina 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.