A fall in dengue fever infections in Jakarta

Jakarta : There was a massive fall in the number of dengue fever infections when a bacteria was infused into the disease carrying mosquitoes. Such a move provided some respite in the fight against the illness that affects numerous people throughout the world.

The results of the study that continued for three years found a place in the New England Journal of Medicine in this week. The study pointed out that the introduction of a harmless bacteria (Wolbachia) into the dengue carrying mosquitoes resulted in a massive fall in the number of cases.

According to the researchers, the number of hospitalization cases dropped down by 86 per cent where Wolbachia was treated in the parts of Yogyakarta, a city in Java island where the experiment was done.

The World Mosquito Program conducted this experiment at Monash University in Australia and Gadjah Mada University in Indonesia.

Adi Utarini, a public-health researcher from Gadjah Mada University and also a co-leader on the study stated, “The 77 per cent figure is honestly quite fantastic for a transmittable disease and we’re very grateful with the result”.

The study involved introducing Wolbachia into the mosquito across certain parts of Yogyakarta in order to see how it affected the infection among people aged in between 3-45 years of age.

It is now distributed to other regions of the city.

Wolbachia restrains the power of the virus to reproduce in the dengue carrying Aedes aegypti mosquitoes and cause infection when they bite people.

According to the researchers, the earlier trials that involved Wolbachia that is basically found in fruit flies and other insects were very much effective in reducing the number of dengue.

The scientists believe that the method can be a boon in fighting against the diseases that proved to be fatal.

Symptoms range from body pains, fever to nausea.

Scott O’Neill, director of World Mosquito Program stated, “This is the result we’ve been waiting for.”

“We have evidence (that) our Wolbachia method is safe, sustainable and dramatically reduces incidence of dengue.”

“It gives us great confidence in the positive impact this method will have worldwide when provided to communities at risk of these mosquito-transmitted diseases.”

Dengue is the most fast spreading mosquito-borne disease throughout the world. More than 50 million people gets affected every year throughout the world and that includes nearly 8 million people from Indonesia.

Researchers opined that the studies have proved that the Wolbachia process was successful in stopping the spread of Zika, chikungunya, yellow fever and other mosquito related diseases.