{"id":3324,"date":"2018-11-01T11:24:00","date_gmt":"2018-11-01T01:24:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ppmmagazine.com.au\/?p=3324"},"modified":"2022-11-04T16:13:00","modified_gmt":"2022-11-04T06:13:00","slug":"townsville-residents-nanny-dengue-infected-mosquitoes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/professionalpestmanager.com\/nz\/pest-control-mosquitoes\/townsville-residents-nanny-dengue-infected-mosquitoes\/","title":{"rendered":"TOWNSVILLE RESIDENTS NANNY DENGUE-INFECTED MOSQUITOES"},"content":{"rendered":"

Townsville has become home to a modified population of mosquitoes in a measure to curb outbreaks of dengue in the country.<\/em><\/p>\n

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Australian medical entomologist, Professor Scott O\u2019Neill<\/strong>, recently convinced the residents of Townsville to become a haven for disease-resistant mosquitoes, in a bid to stop the spread of dengue and other viruses.<\/p>\n

About 7000 families became nannies for the mosquitoes, with each hosting a tub of Aedes aegypti<\/em> eggs in their yard, stocked with fish food to nourish their little charges as they develop and take flight. The insects are part of a project by the non-profit World Mosquito Program, with regional hubs at Monash University in Melbourne and\u00a0Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, to fight annual outbreaks of dengue fever.<\/p>\n

The mosquitoes \u2013 about 4 million in all, infected with a bacterium called Wolbachia<\/em>, which reduces their ability to transmit dengue, Zika, and chikungunya viruses \u2013 were released to mate with local mosquitoes. Although found in around 60% of insects species naturally, Wolbachia<\/em> is not normally found in Aedes aegypti<\/em> mosquitoes and therefore if the number of Wolbachia-<\/em>containing mosquitoes builds up in the population, in theory the amount of dengue transmission should decrease.<\/p>\n

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According to Professor O\u2019Neill, director of the World Mosquito Program based at Melbourne\u2019s Monash University, the city has been dengue-free since 2014.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe community embraced the project, with even school children releasing the special mosquitoes that passed\u00a0on their bacteria to the local population of mosquitoes,\u201d Professor O\u2019Neill said.<\/p>\n

\u201cAt a cost of around $15 per person, the Townsville trial demonstrates the approach can be rolled out quickly, efficiently and cost effectively to help provide communities ongoing protection from mosquito-borne diseases.\u201d<\/p>\n

The program is currently working in 11 countries and aims to deploy the Wolbachia<\/em> mosquitoes in larger and poorer parts around the world with a target of reducing the cost to just US$1 per person. The next step for the team is in Yogyakarta in Indonesia \u2014 a city of nearly 390,000 \u2014 where a randomised controlled trial is under way.<\/p>\n

According to Professor O\u2019Neill, Townsville had experienced local transmission outbreaks every year for 10 years preceding the intervention, but no dengue transmission has occurred since the trial started in 2014.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis study was not set up as an experimental, epidemiological trial. We\u2019re actually doing that in Indonesia at the moment \u2014 a randomised, controlled trial, which will read out in about 18 months. But this is showing extremely encouraging evidence as we lead up to that piece of work,\u201d Professor O\u2019Neill said.<\/p>\n

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Reworked extract from: \u2018This Scientist Convinced An Australian City To Become A Haven For Mosquitoes\u2019, by Kelly Servick, Sciencemag. Org, 1 August, 2018, and; \u2018Dengue Fever Outbreak Stopped By Special Mosquitoes\u2019, BBC News, 1 August, 2018.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Townsville has become home to a modified population of mosquitoes in a measure to curb outbreaks of dengue in the country.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":133,"featured_media":3326,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"Townsville has become home to a modified population of mosquitoes in a measure to curb outbreaks of dengue in the country.","_seopress_robots_index":"yes","_gspb_post_css":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[359],"tags":[],"company":[],"pest":[157],"pesticide":[],"product-service":[],"class_list":["post-3324","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-pest-control-mosquitoes","pest-mosquitoes","wpbf-post"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/professionalpestmanager.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3324","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/professionalpestmanager.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/professionalpestmanager.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/professionalpestmanager.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/133"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/professionalpestmanager.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3324"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/professionalpestmanager.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3324\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/professionalpestmanager.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3326"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/professionalpestmanager.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3324"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/professionalpestmanager.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3324"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/professionalpestmanager.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3324"},{"taxonomy":"company","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/professionalpestmanager.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/company?post=3324"},{"taxonomy":"pest","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/professionalpestmanager.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pest?post=3324"},{"taxonomy":"pesticide","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/professionalpestmanager.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pesticide?post=3324"},{"taxonomy":"product-service","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/professionalpestmanager.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/product-service?post=3324"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}