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 Called an irradiator, the device has been used to control fruit
flies on the Portuguese island of Madeira. The International Atomic
Energy Agency said on Monday it will pay to ship the device to
Juazeiro, in the northeastern state of Bahia, as soon as the
Brazilian government issues an import permit.
"It's a birth control method, the equivalent of family planning for
humans," said Kostas Bourtzis, a molecular biologist with the IAEA's
insect pest control laboratory.
Brazil is scrambling to eradicate the Aedes mosquito that has caused
an epidemic of dengue and more recently an outbreak of Zika, a virus
associated with an alarming surge in cases of babies born with
abnormally small heads.
The new epidemic threatens to scare visitors away from the Rio 2016
Olympic Games in August.
A Brazilian non-profit called Moscamed will breed up to 12 million
male mosquitoes a week and then sterilize them with the cobalt-60
irradiator, produced by Canadian company MDS Nordion, Bourtzis said.
The sterile males will be released into target areas to mate with
wild females who will lay eggs that produce no offspring, he said
during an IAEA meeting of mosquito control experts.
After an initial program in a dozen towns near Juazeiro, the
Brazilian government would have to decide on scaling up the sterile
mosquito production with more funding for use in cities, where they
would be released from the air, possibly from drones, Bourtzis said.
With no cure or vaccine available for Zika, which has spread to more
than 30 countries, mostly in the Americas, the only way to contain
the virus is to reduce the mosquito population.
Brazilian researchers are also experimenting with radiation. The
Fiocruz biomedical research institute based in Recife has released
30,000 sterile mosquitoes on Fernando de Noronha, a island 350 km
(217 miles) off the coast of northeast Brazil.
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The pilot project seeks to replicate lab results in which 70 percent
of the eggs laid by the females were sterile, Fiocruz researcher
Alice Varjal said. Initial results are expected in May, she said.
Varjal said the sterile insect technique using small doses of
radiation was the safest way to fight the mosquito because nothing
toxic gets released into the environment. She said it was more
cost-effective than using transgenic mosquitoes.
Another experiment underway in Brazil involves a mosquito
genetically modified so their offspring will die before reaching
adulthood and being able to reproduce, developed by Oxitec, the
British subsidiary of Intrexon.
Much remains unknown about Zika, including whether the virus
actually causes microcephaly. Brazil said it has confirmed more than
500 cases of microcephaly, and considers most of them to be related
to Zika infections in the mothers. Brazil is investigating more than
3,900 additional suspected cases of microcephaly.
(Reporting by Anthony Boadle; Editing by Lisa Shumaker)
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