There are 200-300 million cases of malaria and around100 million of dengue fever Worldwide each year according to The World Health Organization (WHO).
Mosquitos breed their eggs in stagnat water, so rain and the puddles it creates are a fertil place for this insects. Hadyn Parry, is a Biotech entrepreneur who leads a science based on the genetically engineering of male mosquitos to make them sterile, and by releasing the insects into the wild, cut down on disease-carrying species.
Lab-bred male mosquitos are provided with a gene that, when they mate with a female in the wild, either prevents the females from having offspring, or is passed on to the next generation of mosquitos, which then lives are shorter than average life- hopefully short enough to prevent it from biting and infecting anyone with dengue. “If you can control the numbers in the dry season, then you don’t have an egg bank of mosquitoes when the rainy season starts,” says Hadyn Parry.
TEDTalks is a daily video podcast of the best talks and performances from the TED Conference, where the world’s leading thinkers and doers give the talk of their lives in 18 minutes.
More info: http://www.ted.com/speakers
Produced by: TED
Year: 2013
Language: English
