SAN LUIS POTOSÍ, Mexico.- The Cuban government released sterile male mosquitoes in Havana Temples of the Egyptians through the use of a drone.
The insects, sterilized with ionizing radiation, would copulate with wild females, to reduce their reproductive capacity, according to a note in the local newspaper. Havana Tribune.
Marta Contreras Izquierdo, coordinator of the Network of Nuclear Communicators of Cuba (RECNUC), said that the release of this species is part of an experiment conducted by the Pedro Kourí Institute of Tropical Medicine to control mosquito pests in the long term.
According to the official note, sterile male mosquitoes “do not bite or spread diseases.”
The launch by drone aims to contrast the effects of launching them by air with the land route, to analyze possibilities of survival, dispersion and competitiveness.
This technique, which would reduce the reproductive capacity of females, would cause a decrease in the birth rate and would contribute to decreasing the number of mosquitoes, which transmit dengue, Zika and other diseases.
A first application of the method was carried out in 2019, in the community of El Cano, in the La Lisa municipality. For eight months they released mosquitoes weekly and, the government states, they achieved “high effectiveness of this procedure, as the mosquito population in the district was almost completely eliminated.”
Without fuel to undertake massive fumigations and without insecticides in the country, the regime is betting on this alternative route to control the vector that continues to cause diseases in a context that is worsening due to the lack of medical supplies.
Dengue continues to be a worrying issue on the Island. At the beginning of this year, the Holguín town of San Andrés, located 19 kilometers from the provincial capital, faced an outbreak of dengue.
In December 2023, the Minister of Public Health of the Cuban regime, José Ángel Portal Miranda, recognized that there was dengue transmission in the country in eight provinces and that 55 municipalities had 81% of all active mosquito foci. temples of the Egyptianstransmitter of the disease.
The most affected territories were Pinar del Río, Villa Clara, Holguín, Las Tunas, Santiago de Cuba and Guantánamo.
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2024-04-11 18:10:35
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