UN ready to irradiate mosquito sperm to combat Zika virus
A new method to render male mosquitoes infertile by nuclear radiation could help reduce populations of the insect carrying the Zika virus that is linked to thousands of birth defects in Brazil, the UN atomic agency said on Tuesday.
Experts from the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency are to meet Brazilian officials on Feb. 16 to discuss how best to roll out the so-called Sterile Insect Technology (SIT) in the host country of the 2016 Summer Olympics.
"If Brazil released a huge number of sterile males, it would take a few months to reduce the population, (but) it has to be combined with other methods," IAEA Deputy Director General Aldo Malavasi told reporters.
Besides SIT, the spread of the Zika virus, which the World Health Organization has declared an international public health emergency, could be fought by more intense sanitation efforts, the use of insecticides or traps.
