TINY crustaceans that eat mosquito larvae could make a big difference in the fight against dengue fever.
“We’ve had almost total success eliminating mosquitoes in 37 communes in Vietnam, and it’s been done by the local people,” says Brian Kay of the Queensland Institute of Medical Research in Brisbane, who set up a control programme with Vu Sinh Nam of Vietnam’s health ministry. There have been no cases of dengue in these communes, and the scheme will be extended to other areas.
The scheme relies mainly on freshwater copepod crustaceans about a millimetre long that eat young mosquito larvae (The…
