JawaPos.com – Director of the Center for Tropical Medicine, Faculty of Medicine, Public Health and Nursing (FKKMK), Gadjah Mada University, Riris Andono Ahmad, explained that testing materials for mosquitoes containing Wolbachia had already been carried out in Indonesia, namely in Yogyakarta in 2022 and was proven to be effective.
“As a result, in locations where wolbachia has been distributed, it has been proven to be able to reduce cases of dengue fever by up to 77%, in addition to reducing the need for hospitalization of dengue patients in hospitals by 86%,” said Riris in his statement to journalists, Sunday (19/11).
On the other hand, the Director of Infectious Disease Prevention and Control (P2PM), Dr. Imran Pambudi, emphasized that innovations in the spread of wolbachia in mosquitoes, he said, needed to be implemented. The reason is, the number of dengue fever cases in Indonesia is still high with the highest death rate in children.
“Apart from that, there are still many areas reporting extraordinary incidents due to dengue fever. “This will save our children in the future,” he said.
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The effectiveness of using wolbachia technology to reduce the incidence of dengue fever, said Imran, has also been proven in 13 other countries, namely in Australia, Brazil, Colombia, El Salvador, Sri Lanka, Honduras, Laos, Vietnam, Kiribati, Fiji, Vanuatu, New Caledonia, and Mexico.
In Singapore, Wolbachia technology is applied using a suppression method or reducing the number of mosquito populations. This strategy is implemented by releasing only male mosquitoes. Mating male mosquitoes with female mosquitoes in natural populations will produce eggs that cannot hatch.
So the mosquito population will decrease. However, female mosquitoes that still exist in natural populations will still have the ability to transmit the dengue virus.
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“Apart from that, the suppression method requires the continuous release of male mosquitoes, so that the mosquito population can always be controlled. This requires enormous resources with temporary impacts,” concluded Imran.
2023-11-19 08:42:00
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