The number of cases of mosquito-borne diseases in Taiwan could be significantly reduced by introducing male mosquitoes with Wolbachia — a bacterium that lives within insect cells — into the environment, a big data simulation conducted by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and IBM’s Health Corps showed.
Outbreaks of dengue fever are recorded in Taiwan every summer, with last year’s outbreak infecting more than 40,000 people and causing more than 200 deaths.
To fight the outbreaks, the CDC partnered with IBM’s Health Corps — a global pro bono program focused on tackling health issues — and worked with a team of six IBM experts for three weeks to establish a dengue fever prevention decisionmaking model.
In March, the WHO Vector Control Advisory Group reviewed potential mosquito control tools in response to the Zika virus outbreak. It included the use of Wolbachia, saying evidence indicated that when the bacterium is introduced into mosquito populations, it can reduce mosquitoes’ ability to transmit arboviruses to humans.
Wolbachia is a natural bacterium that is present in up to 60 percent of all insects, CDC Epidemic Intelligence Center Director Liu Ting-ping (劉定萍) said, adding that certain types of Wolbachia can sterilize male mosquitoes.
CDC Director-General Chou Jih-haw (周志浩) said a few countries, such as China and Singapore, are conducting experiments with using the bacteria to reduce Aedes mosquito populations, and the collaborative team has created a model to simulate the outcome of applying this method in Taiwan.
Another approach experimented in a few other countries, including Australia, Brazil, Vietnam, Indonesia and Colombia, is spreading Wolbachia into wild mosquito populations to reduce their ability to transmit disease.
IBM Health Corps’ Saleem Hussain said preliminary results suggested that if 20,000 Wolbachia-infected mosquitoes were to be released into the environment once every three weeks for 28 weeks, the mosquito population would be reduced by about 85 percent and cases of mosquito-borne diseases would be reduced by about 60 percent.
However, more simulations and analyses must be conducted if the CDC decides to apply the method as a dengue prevention strategy, he added.
Liu said the partnership program allowed CDC officials to learn how to use IBM cognitive tools and predictive analytics, and to establish a model that can be used for evaluating preventive measures for other communicable diseases.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
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