Bangladesh aims at releasing ‘sterile mosquitoes’ in 2 yrs to fight dengue
International Atomic Energy Agency lends hand to advance Bangladesh’s fight against mosquito-borne diseases
Reaz Ahmad
Publish : 16 Jan 2022, 12:08 AMUpdate : 16 Jan 2022, 12:32 AM
Mosquitoes are among humankind’s deadliest enemies because of their ability to transmit diseases such as dengue, malaria, Chikungunya and Zika, with public health consequences on a global scale.
Beginning in 2000 with a few dozen cases, dengue gradually emerged as a serious public health concern in Bangladesh with its known cases hitting a peak at over 100,000 in 2019. And globally, the number of dengue cases reported to the World Health Organization has increased eight-fold over the last two decades.
At the height of its worst dengue season, Bangladesh turned to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) for assistance in August 2019. Within a month assistance came in the form of an IAEA mission recommending that Bangladesh pursue the sterile insect technique (SIT) to control Aedes mosquitoes, the vector of the dengue virus.
SIT is a nuclear-based environment-friendly technique of birth control whereby target insects are mass-reared and then sterilized by using radiation. The sterile males are packaged up and sent to the infested areas and released to mate with wild females. The mating results in no offspring, reducing the wild insect population over time.
Starting from this January, Bangladesh and the IAEA are embarking on a four-year technical cooperation program to advance sterile mosquito technology as part of an area-wide integrated pest management program to control Aedes mosquitoes.
Halfway through this program (sometime late next year or in early 2024), Bangladesh can expect a batch of sterile mosquitoes being released in designated area/s of Dhaka, sources at both the Atomic Energy Research Establishment (AERE) and IAEA told Dhaka Tribune on Saturday.
Headquartered in Savar, AERE is the country’s largest nuclear research centre under the Bangladesh Atomic Energy Commission (BAEC), while the Vienna-based IAEA is the world's central intergovernmental forum for scientific and technical cooperation in the nuclear field.
The SIT program initiation in Bangladesh takes place at a time when the IAEA has just announced a ‘defeat’ of mosquitos in a similar program trial in Cuba.
In a report titled “Mosquitoes Defeated in Cuba Trial with Nuclear Technique,” the IAEA Office of Public Information and Communication last Thursday said “a pilot trial of a SIT campaign in a Havana neighborhood has reduced mosquito (Aedes aegypti) numbers by up to 90% last year and early reports indicate that cases of mosquito-borne diseases were completely eliminated in the last two months of the trial.”
File photo of Science and Technology Minister Yeafesh Osman inspecting an Atomic Energy Research Establishment lab facility that breeds sterile mosquitoes at Savar on August 3, 2019 Dhaka Tribune
“Using the SIT for mosquitoes is relatively new anywhere in the world, and pilot trials like this one show how promising they can be. For Cuba’s pilot trial, almost 1.3 million sterile male mosquitoes were released in 21 weeks, and the goal in the near future is to scale up the trial with a larger area and consequently many more sterile mosquitoes,” said Rui Cardoso Pereira, Head of the Insect Pest Control Section at the Joint FAO/IAEA Division of Nuclear Techniques in Food and Agriculture Centre in Vienna.
Several countries, including Brazil, Cuba, Germany, Greece, Indonesia, Italy, Malaysia, Mauritius, Mexico, Spain and the United States of America, are developing the use of SIT for mosquito control.
Dr Mahfuza Khan heads the Institute of Food and Radiation Biology (IFRB) of AERE and has long been overseeing Bangladesh’s gradual capacity building in sterile mosquito research. The IFRB Director told this correspondent yesterday that under the IAEA technical cooperation program the institute would form a national team of scientists and experts, receive technical support and training on SIT, and partake of scientific visit programs.
Asked about release of the sterile mosquitoes in the environment, the IFRB director said: “It’s difficult to provide a timeline for that right now as lots also depend on the current Covid-19 pandemic situation. At least two years will go before we can expect to release sterile mosquitoes in a selected Dhaka neighborhood.”
“Dengue ravaged Bangladesh on an unprecedented scale in 2019. There were over 100,000 reported cases, our health system was overwhelmed with people suffering from severe flu-like symptoms, and more than 150 people lost their lives,” said Mahfuza Khan.
“As we are fighting to save people from these diseases, our efforts to control mosquitoes should be focused on an integrated approach, including the use of the SIT.”
Dr Kajla Seheli heads the Insect Biotechnology Division (IBD) of the IFRB. She said despite pandemic-induced challenges laboratory work on SIT went ahead and it was expected that with the technical cooperation program rolled out things would gain further momentum soon.
Her colleague at IBD, Dr Md Aftab Hossain, told Dhaka Tribune on Saturday that over the past two years they had succeeded in gaining the right sterile trait in mosquitoes by applying a lesser dose of radiation as recommended by the IAEA.
IAEA listed its Bangladesh SIT program – “Validating the Sterile Insect Technique as a Key Component of an Area-Wide Integrated Pest Management Program Against Aedes aegypti in Dhaka” – as one of its 15 new national-level projects in 2022 and tasked Dr Maylen Gómez as Technical Officer for the Bangladesh program.
Though the AERE lab in Savar succeeded in breeding sterile mosquitoes back in 2017, its deployment in the environment cannot be done till the lab further develops its capacity, trains its manpower, surveys the mosquito population in dengue outbreak zones, and carries out field trials on the sterile mosquitoes.
Bangladesh aims at releasing ‘sterile mosquitoes’ in 2 yrs to fight dengue
International Atomic Energy Agency lends hand to advance Bangladesh’s fight against mosquito-borne diseases
Mosquitoes are among humankind’s deadliest enemies because of their ability to transmit diseases such as dengue, malaria, Chikungunya and Zika, with public health consequences on a global scale.
Beginning in 2000 with a few dozen cases, dengue gradually emerged as a serious public health concern in Bangladesh with its known cases hitting a peak at over 100,000 in 2019. And globally, the number of dengue cases reported to the World Health Organization has increased eight-fold over the last two decades.
At the height of its worst dengue season, Bangladesh turned to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) for assistance in August 2019. Within a month assistance came in the form of an IAEA mission recommending that Bangladesh pursue the sterile insect technique (SIT) to control Aedes mosquitoes, the vector of the dengue virus.
SIT is a nuclear-based environment-friendly technique of birth control whereby target insects are mass-reared and then sterilized by using radiation. The sterile males are packaged up and sent to the infested areas and released to mate with wild females. The mating results in no offspring, reducing the wild insect population over time.
Starting from this January, Bangladesh and the IAEA are embarking on a four-year technical cooperation program to advance sterile mosquito technology as part of an area-wide integrated pest management program to control Aedes mosquitoes.
Halfway through this program (sometime late next year or in early 2024), Bangladesh can expect a batch of sterile mosquitoes being released in designated area/s of Dhaka, sources at both the Atomic Energy Research Establishment (AERE) and IAEA told Dhaka Tribune on Saturday.
Headquartered in Savar, AERE is the country’s largest nuclear research centre under the Bangladesh Atomic Energy Commission (BAEC), while the Vienna-based IAEA is the world's central intergovernmental forum for scientific and technical cooperation in the nuclear field.
The SIT program initiation in Bangladesh takes place at a time when the IAEA has just announced a ‘defeat’ of mosquitos in a similar program trial in Cuba.
In a report titled “Mosquitoes Defeated in Cuba Trial with Nuclear Technique,” the IAEA Office of Public Information and Communication last Thursday said “a pilot trial of a SIT campaign in a Havana neighborhood has reduced mosquito (Aedes aegypti) numbers by up to 90% last year and early reports indicate that cases of mosquito-borne diseases were completely eliminated in the last two months of the trial.”
“Using the SIT for mosquitoes is relatively new anywhere in the world, and pilot trials like this one show how promising they can be. For Cuba’s pilot trial, almost 1.3 million sterile male mosquitoes were released in 21 weeks, and the goal in the near future is to scale up the trial with a larger area and consequently many more sterile mosquitoes,” said Rui Cardoso Pereira, Head of the Insect Pest Control Section at the Joint FAO/IAEA Division of Nuclear Techniques in Food and Agriculture Centre in Vienna.
Several countries, including Brazil, Cuba, Germany, Greece, Indonesia, Italy, Malaysia, Mauritius, Mexico, Spain and the United States of America, are developing the use of SIT for mosquito control.
Dr Mahfuza Khan heads the Institute of Food and Radiation Biology (IFRB) of AERE and has long been overseeing Bangladesh’s gradual capacity building in sterile mosquito research. The IFRB Director told this correspondent yesterday that under the IAEA technical cooperation program the institute would form a national team of scientists and experts, receive technical support and training on SIT, and partake of scientific visit programs.
Asked about release of the sterile mosquitoes in the environment, the IFRB director said: “It’s difficult to provide a timeline for that right now as lots also depend on the current Covid-19 pandemic situation. At least two years will go before we can expect to release sterile mosquitoes in a selected Dhaka neighborhood.”
“Dengue ravaged Bangladesh on an unprecedented scale in 2019. There were over 100,000 reported cases, our health system was overwhelmed with people suffering from severe flu-like symptoms, and more than 150 people lost their lives,” said Mahfuza Khan.
“As we are fighting to save people from these diseases, our efforts to control mosquitoes should be focused on an integrated approach, including the use of the SIT.”
Dr Kajla Seheli heads the Insect Biotechnology Division (IBD) of the IFRB. She said despite pandemic-induced challenges laboratory work on SIT went ahead and it was expected that with the technical cooperation program rolled out things would gain further momentum soon.
Her colleague at IBD, Dr Md Aftab Hossain, told Dhaka Tribune on Saturday that over the past two years they had succeeded in gaining the right sterile trait in mosquitoes by applying a lesser dose of radiation as recommended by the IAEA.
IAEA listed its Bangladesh SIT program – “Validating the Sterile Insect Technique as a Key Component of an Area-Wide Integrated Pest Management Program Against Aedes aegypti in Dhaka” – as one of its 15 new national-level projects in 2022 and tasked Dr Maylen Gómez as Technical Officer for the Bangladesh program.
Though the AERE lab in Savar succeeded in breeding sterile mosquitoes back in 2017, its deployment in the environment cannot be done till the lab further develops its capacity, trains its manpower, surveys the mosquito population in dengue outbreak zones, and carries out field trials on the sterile mosquitoes.