Brazil to breed mosquitoes to fight dengue

Brasilia: Brazilian authorities have inaugurated a breeder for a genetically modified type of aedes aegypti mosquito in hopes of finding a more effective way to combat dengue, of which over 430,000 cases have been registered this year nationwide.

The so-called "mosquito factory" was built at a cost of 1.7 million reais ($850,000) and financed by the government of Bahia state with the help of the health ministry.

According to health officials, mosquitoes bred in such an installation receive injections of different viruses that kill the larvae before they are born, which means the number of mosquitoes tends to diminish.

The so-called \'mosquito factory\' was built at a cost of $850,000.

The process has been tested successfully in the city of Juazeiro in central Bahia state, where the number of aedes aegypti mosquitoes dropped by 90 per cent in six months, according to official estimates.

The laboratory inaugurated on Saturday will breed 4 million mosquitoes a year, which the authorities plan to let loose in the future in a medium-sized city in order to test the real impact of the experiment based on techniques already tried out by English scientists.

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