Curbing a Menace

Abstract

45-46SINCE time immemorial millions and millions of people have been dying due to the menacing activity of a moving bombshell that transmits some of the world’s worst life threatening and devastating diseases. This living jeopardy had once become the nightmare of one of the greatest scientists, Sir Ronald Ross (Nobel prize winner for Physiology in the year 1902). It is none other than the deadly mosquito. Mosquitoes transmit many parasitic and viral diseases like Malaria, Chikungunya, Dengue, Filariasis, Westnile fever etc that are on the rise in many tropical and subtropical countries. Over the past few decades efforts have been made to develop mosquito control strategies by targeting the larval or the adult stages and use of biological agents and genetic engineering techniques against the disease-transmitting mosquitoes