China has world's largest mosquito factory in Guangzhou, southern China's Guangdong province, producing about one million sterilized male mosquitoes every week. According to Global Times.
In Guangzhou's Science City area, the team leader, Xi Zhiyong, is in charge of releasing the produced mosquitoes to the Shazi Island every week to combat Dengue Fever.
This was the first trial test in the field and it has been proved to reduce the mosquito population by 90 percent.
Releasing sterilized mosquito to the wild is one of several innovative attempts to tackle dengue fever by diluting the mosquito population with insects that don't carry the disease.
The mosquito-borne sickness causes pain so agonizing it is also known as "breakbone disease" and last year saw China's worst outbreak in two decades, with more than 47,000 cases, almost all in the Guangdong province.
Catch one strain and you will be immune to the virus in the future – but if bitten by a mosquito carrying another one of the strains, you are more likely to develop severe dengue, also known as dengue haemorrhagic fever. No vaccine or treatment is available and recently it has caused about 22,000 deaths a year worldwide, mostly among children.
