The United Nations has begun to experiment with the use of 'drones' to control the population of mosquitoes that carry the deadly Zika virus , at a reduced cost and with ample possibilities of success, according to the first results.
The exact procedure is to use the drones to release tens of thousands of mosquitoes in the air sterilized with radiation , capable of interacting with the females but unable to generate offspring, thus reducing the number of possible contagion agents.
The drones solve the "technical wall" against which the Sterile Insect Technique (SIT) had been clashing for years , and are the result of the research carried out jointly by the International Atomic Energy Agency of the UN (IAEA), the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the non-profit group WeRobotics .
"The use of drones is a breakthrough and paves the way for large-scale and cost-effective launches, also in densely populated areas," said Jeremy Bouyer, medical entomologist of the Joint FAO / IAEA Division of Nuclear Techniques in Food and Agriculture .
However, to be effective, the technique requires the uniform release of a large number of insects in good condition in a certain area .
For example, Aedes mosquitoes , responsible for the spread of diseases such as dengue and yellow fever, do not disperse by more than 100 meters during their lifetime. They are also fragile , and high-altitude launches with aircraft can damage their wings and legs. The drone-based system overcomes this problem.
"We are pleased with the initial tests that show a mortality of less than 10 percent during the entire process of refrigeration, transport and air launch," said Adam Klaptocz, co-founder of WeRobotics.
In addition, this innovative technology also halves the cost of the process by half . Given the difficulty of deploying them in airplanes, the sterile mosquitoes ended up being released by hand and at ground level, which required that they require a lot of time and intensive labor.
"Now, with the drone, we can treat 20 hectares in five minutes ," Bouyer said, "The device can transport 50,000 sterile mosquitoes per flight." The total cost of each device is 10,000 euros, but agencies are already preparing new lighter models. and of greater capacity: up to 150,000 mosquitoes per flight.
Experiment in Brazil
The test of the system was carried out last month in Brazil , a country plagued by the Zika epidemic two years ago, which also spread to other parts of South and North America and affected several islands in the Pacific. Southeast Asia
Brazil plans to begin using the drone-based system in selected urban and rural areas as of January 2019 , at the peak of the summer season and mosquitoes.
"We trust in the application of SIT for the control of Aedes aegypti in Brazil with the results of the drone tests", explained Jair Virginio, Director of Moscamed, based in Brazil, a collaborating center of the atomic agency.
No comments:
Post a Comment