Cayman
Aedes aegypti in the Cayman Islands
Aedes aegypti is a non-native species in the Cayman Islands. These mosquitoes are more than just a nuisance as they can spread serious diseases such as dengue fever, yellow fever, Zika and Chikungunya.
Aedes aegypti is particularly difficult to control as it lives around humans, and mosquito control authorities in the Cayman Islands and elsewhere are looking for new technologies to suppress the population of these disease carriers.
Read more about how our solution works here.
East End
In a collaboration with the Cayman Islands’ Mosquito Research and Control Unit (MRCU), releases of our 1st Generation Friendly™ Aedes aegypti, OX513A, in the town of East End on Grand Cayman, led to significant population suppression compared to abundance of Aedes aegypti in untreated sites.
The results of these ground-breaking trials are described further in the following articles:
Harris et al. (2011). Field performance of engineered male mosquitoes. Nature Biotech., 29:1034-1037. http://www.nature.com/nbt/journal/v29/n11/full/nbt.2019.html
Harris et al. (2012) Successful suppression of a field mosquito population by release of engineered male mosquitoes. Nature Biotech. 30:828-830.
West Bay
In 2018-2019, Oxitec was invited again to collaborate with the Mosquito Research and Control Unit (MRCU) on a project deploying the OX513A Friendly™ mosquitoes in the Cayman Islands, designed to evaluate how best to integrate Oxitec’s technology with specific traditional control approaches targeting Aedes aegypti, following approval by national regulatory authorities and several months of community engagement activities.
