Singapore has had it with dengue and mosquitoes!
The NEA (National Environmental Agency) of our neighbouring country, Singapore, aims to produce a whopping 5 million male mosquitoes containing Wolbachia bacteria that will help to strengthen the immune system so that the dengue virus will not affect them.
This Wolbachia bacteria is shown to be harmless towards humans and makes it harder for the dengue virus to multiply as it is their competitor for food. Additionally, with global warming issues affecting the climate making it hotter, dengue cases are only made worse.
Also, these male mosquitos do not bite humans!
Nope! The NEA is not going to breed even more mosquitoes that exceed their initial amount!
Even though these Wolbachia bacteria-infected male mosquitoes are meant to intentionally mate with the female Aedes mosquitoes, their eggs will be unable to hatch as the two different mosquitoes are biologically incompatible.
Started from the bottom now we here!
Back in 2016, the NEA conducted ‘Project Wolbachia’ as small scale field studies by releasing a few of these anti-dengue mosquitoes around some housing estates. It was a success, as it had a 50% reduction rate in the mosquito population and the rate has had massive improvement up till 90%!
With their new facility at Techplace 2, Ang Mo Kio Avenue 5, their production capacity is said to increase 10-fold!
As machines are gradually improving over the years, we are looking forward to new innovations like this!
Header image: todayonline