PETALING JAYA: The health ministry has denied releasing a batch of Wolbachia-infected mosquitoes in Negeri Sembilan to prevent dengue.
Deputy director-general for public health Norhayati Rusli said there were no mosquitoes infected with the Wolbachia micro-organism in Negeri Sembilan, as alleged in a viral TikTok video recently.
She said the video was in fact related to the health ministry’s malaria eradication programme and was not related to the prevention of dengue.
According to Norhayati, Wolbachia-infected mosquitoes were introduced in 2019 in seven states as a strategy to reduce dengue infections.
“After two years of operation, 16 out of 19 release sites have seen a decrease in dengue cases, ranging from 33% to 100%.
“Additionally, one of the remaining three sites has shown sustained zero dengue cases,” she said in a statement.
Wolbachia is a micro-organism that lives naturally in the reproductive organs of insects and exists in about 60% of insects, except for the Aedes aegypti mosquito that spreads dengue.
Injecting the Wolbachia micro-organism into the Aedes aegypti mosquito eggs is seen as a method to prevent the spread of the dengue virus as the Wolbachia virus inhibits dengue from self-replicating within the carrier. - FMT
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