- Companies join to deploy dengue-resistant mosquitoes in Caribbean
As the Caribbean battles a record number of dengue infections, two private businesses launched a cooperation on Friday to release mosquitoes bred with a bacteria that prevents the dengue virus.
Orbit Services Partners Inc., a Barbados-based firm, is collaborating on the initiative with Verily, a San Francisco-based health technology company. According to Orbit chairman Anthony Da Silva, the firms have been meeting with government authorities in the area with the aim of beginning the project early next year.
Barbados, Guyana, Jamaica, St Kitts and Nevis, St Maarten, St Martin, Suriname, Dominican Republic, and Haiti will be among the countries targeted.
Similar initiatives with the Wolbachia bacteria have previously been deployed across the globe. In a laboratory, mosquitos are infected with Wolbachia and then released into the wild, where they pass it on to their progeny. The bacteria blocks the dengue virus from reproducing inside the stomach of a mosquito.
Da Silva said that the collaboration had been in the works for three years but had been put on hold due to the outbreak. Individual Caribbean countries must yet approve the initiative.
This year, the Caribbean and the Americas have recorded more than 4 million dengue cases, the largest number since records started in 1980.
