Dengue fever, carried by mosquitoes, is swamping the populations of Brazil and Peru, Argentina, Laos and causing major concerns in other parts of the world.
It has spiked fourfold in Brazil just this year following the release of millions of gene-edited mosquitos by the World Mosquito Program run by the United Nations.
Vaccines are being produced and distributed on a timetable pushed by the urgency of the events, and multiple deaths already are being reported.
The Guardian reported there have been nearly a million cases in Brazil, and almost the same number in Peru.
Government officials say there already have been dozens of deaths.
“Brazil has bought 5.2m doses of the dengue vaccine Qdenga, developed by Japanese drugmaker Takeda, with another 1.32m doses provided at no cost to the government,” the report said, explaining three Brazilian states are in a state of emergency.
The ailment is spread by mosquitoes, which were described in an International Business Times report as the “most dangerous animal in the world.”
It was the United Nations that previously cited a World Health Organization warning that more than half of the world was at risk from mosquito-transmitted dengue fever.
The U.N.’s response was to work with technology to create millions of “sterilized pests” and then release them, a campaign which reached Brazil only months ago.
“Countries have already started like Italy, Greece and Mauritius, and others are on the point of doing it, for example the United States, France and Brazil,” said Jeremy Bouyer, medical entomologist at the Division of Nuclear Techniques in Food and Agriculture, a joint International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) / Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) initiative.
Read more at: wnd.com