Dominican Republic to fight zika, dengue by sterilizing mosquitoes

Santo Domingo.- The Dominican government announced it will fight zika and dengue by zapping millions of male mosquitoes with gamma rays to sterilize them and stop the spread of those diseases.

Energy and Mines minister Antonio Isa Conde said Friday that Dominican technicians recentlyparticipated in a training program to learn how to fight the Aedes Aegypti mosquito through a birth control method that sterilizes male mosquitoes.

The technique was provided by the International Atomic Energy Agency and has already been implemented in Brazil, where sterile males were released into target areas to mate with wild females who will lay eggs that produce no offspring.