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Discover the people and the projects trying to make the world a better place

Discover the people and the projects trying to make the world a better place.

Discover the people and the projects trying to make the world a better place.

A weekly programme looking at common challenges around the world and the creative ways people are trying to tackle them.

Presenter Myra Anubi speaks to reporters, experts and innovators to investigate how effective different solutions are, share their successes and inspire listeners with what is possible.

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People Fixing The World: The great mosquito swap

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The Great Mosquito Swap

The great mosquito swap

BBC World Service - People Fixing The World, The great mosquito swap

Scientists are hoping to stop diseases spreading by changing the mosquito population

Medellin in Colombia has been badly affected by dengue fever outbreaks. But now an ambitious project aims to stop the disease – by changing the mosquito population.

Every year, it’s estimated that nearly 400 million people around the world are infected with dengue fever, a potentially fatal illness that’s passed on by mosquitoes. 

No vaccine is effective at preventing people catching the disease, but what if the mosquitoes themselves were treated to stop them spreading it?

In one city that is severely affected – Medellin in Colombia — an ambitious project is underway to swap wild mosquitoes for a variety that is identical in every way, but with one crucial difference.  These mosquitoes have been bred from specimens injected with bacteria that make it impossible to transmit not just dengue, but also the Zika and chikungunya viruses, and Yellow Fever.

Buoyed by successful projects in Australia, the World Mosquito Program is releasing millions of newly-minted mosquitoes across Medellin, in the hope that they will replace the wild population. 

And to reassure the public, schoolchildren are being taught to love mosquitoes, and even to breed them — a message that contradicts what they’ve been brought up to believe.


Presenter: Tom Colls
Reporter / Producer: William Kremer

(Photo Caption: The Aedes Aegyptii Mosquito / Photo Credit: Getty Images)

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