A permanent solution to Nigeria’s Mosquito problem

Gone are the days Mosquitoes fear the palms of Man. I’ve never been more terrorized in my whole entire life, apart from the discomfort of the unrelenting biting there is the fear of coming down with Malaria, they pose a double threat and these mosquitoes are actually good for nothing. I hear they pollinate flowers. Is it by force to pollinate flowers? are they the only insects in this world? We must get rid of these vile creatures for good. they have sucked their way into our health concerns,our economy, our culture. I am sure one of the first words our children learn is ”mosquito” then ”Malaria”, this should not be. I know in Nigeria there are many means of managing mosquitoes such as locking doors and windows, using fans and air conditioning, using insecticides (which is not without its health risk) and using mosquito nets. What if you are in an unfortunate situation and do not have electricity for the night, or mosquito nets or insecticides?  what do you do then? absolutely nothing, you can only suffer and lament. What we need is a permanent solution to the mosquito problem. did you know? There are so many species of Mosquitoes and not only can they transmit malaria, but a host of other viral and parasitic diseases. One such disease is the one caused by the ZIKA virus. This virus causes pregnant women to give birth to babies with congenital defects. It is transmitted by a specie of mosquito called Aedes Aegypti (and no they don’t come from Egypt). This mosquito plagues north America and south America with no remorse, so a biotech firm named Oxitec has come up with a potentially permanent solution. This permanent solution involves genetically modified or engineered Aedes Aegypti mosquitoes called the OX513A strain (sounds like something from a Sci-fi movie), this OX513A is a self-limiting strain (meaning it inhibits its own development). OX513A Males, which do not bite or transmit disease, are released to mate with wild females (Wild is an understatement). The offspring of such matings die before becoming adults. With repeated releases of sufficient numbers of these self-limiting males, there is a reduction in the wild population to below the level needed to transmit disease. Five efficacy trials have taken place in Brazil, Panama, and the Cayman Islands. These have all demonstrated that releases of Oxitec’s self-limiting mosquitoes result in reduction of the wild population by more than 90% – an unparalleled level of control. This is good news, because this is a step in the right direction toward a potentially permanent solution, and one day these mosquitoes may finally go extinct. We just hope that one day a genetically modified Anopheles mosquito is engineered and released in Nigeria in order to destroy these vile blood sucking creatures of the night.

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