According to Cindy Clayton, a reporter for the Virgina Pilot online newspaper, an initiative called “Operation Blessing International” is helping fight the Zika virus in Mexico with mosquito-eating fish.
The humanitarian group is breeding Gambusia in a pond in a fish-breeding area near Acapulco, Guerrero, in the Mexicn pacific coast, and already is giving fish away to families to use in their rain water collection barrels, an Operation Blessing news release says. Already, the fish have been busy eating mosquito larvae.
More than 60 local community health workers will receive the fish and training. The workers will then distribute the fish to families to be used in buckets, barrels, tubs and other containers where water is stored around their homes, the release says.
When its operation is up to full capacity, the organization expects to produce thousands of fish each week to be used to battle mosquitoes that transmit the virus.
The group says Mexican officials have also asked for the program to launch in the Yucatan Peninsula.
The western mosquitofish (Gambusia affinis) is a species of freshwater fish, also known commonly, if ambiguously, as simply mosquitofish or by its generic name, Gambusia, or its common name, gambezi.
The group has had success with mosquito-eating fish in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina and in El Salvador. It also plans a program in Guatemala, Honduras and possibly Peru, the release says.
The group has worked with the Mayo Clinic’s Program for Underserved Global Health to create a public service announcement that will air on TV stations in Latin American countries to educate people about the virus.
1 comment
Hopefully they are not breeding Gambusia affinis outside is native distribution range. The species can be a noxious invader, harming native fish fauna. There are local options!
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