China has set up the world’s largest mosquito factory in Guangzhou province to tackle dengue fever by releasing one million sterilized mosquitoes every week in a bid to dilute their population.
Located in Guangzhou’s Science City area, team leader Xi Zhiyong is in charge of releasing the produced mosquitoes to the Shazi Island every week to combat the fever. This was the first trial test in the field and has been proved to reduce the mosquito population by 90%.
Releasing sterilized mosquito to the wild is one of several innovative attempts to tackle the breakbone disease (so named because the sickness causes an agonizing pain) by diluting the mosquito population with insects that don’t carry the disease.