Brazil to sterilise mosquitoes in Zika fight

Called an irradiator, the device has been used to control fruit flies on the Portuguese island of Madeira. The International Atomic Energy Agency said on Monday it will pay to ship the device to Juazeiro, in the north eastern state of Bahia, as soon as the Brazilian government issues an import permit. “It’s a birth control method, the equivalent of family planning for humans,” said Kostas Bourtzis, a molecular biologist with the IAEA.

A Brazilian non-profit called Moscamed will breed up to 12 million male mosquitoes a week and then sterilize them with the cobalt-60 irradiator, produced by Canadian company MDS Nordion, Bourtzis said. The sterile males will be released into target areas to mate with wild females who will lay eggs that produce no offspring.

After an initial program in a dozen towns near Juazeiro, the Brazilian government would have to decide on scaling up the sterile mosquito production with more funding for use in cities, Bourtzis said. With no cure or vaccine available for Zika, which has spread to more than 30 countries, the only way to contain the virus is to reduce the population of Aedes mosquitoes that cause dengue and Zika, a virus associated with an alarming surge in cases of babies born with abnormally small heads.

Brazilian researchers are also experimenting with radiation. The Fiocruz bio medical research institute has released 30,000 sterile mosquitoes on Fernando de Noronha, a island 350 km off the coast of northeast Brazil. The pilot project seeks to replicate lab results in which 70 percent of the eggs laid by the females were sterile, a researcher said. Another experiment involves a mosquito genetically modified so their offspring will die before reaching adulthood.