With the Zika virus spreading toward the United States,
threatening pregnant mothers and the 2016 Olympics, aid workers have placed
hope in a familiar fish.
In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, the Virginia-based
non-profit Operation Blessing helped avert an outbreak of the West Nile virus
in New Orleans by supplying abandoned swimming pools full of water – ideal
breeding ground for disease-carrying mosquitos – with fish that feast on
mosquito larva.
Now the group hopes to halt the spread of the Zika virus in
Central America by breeding and distributing fish that can eat mosquitos’ larva
before the insects mature and carry the disease, which has been linked to an
epidemic of birth defects in Brazil and spread quickly throughout Latin
America.
Based out of Mexico’s Acapulco area, Operation Blessing is
working in El Salvador to supply a mosquito-eating fish called Sambo—one native
to the area—that families can place in sinks and containers where drinking
water is stored, CBN reports.
El Salvador’s Vice Minister of Health, Eduardo Espinoza,
has hailed the Sambo fish as a successful method in reducing the virus, and
multiple groups have distributed it nationwide.
Operation Blessing plans to curb the disease in Mexico by
working with its government to distribute a similar fish native to that country
called Gambuja.
The non-profit is also in talks with the government of
Honduras, according to CBN, an affiliate of the non-profit.
Bill Horan, president of Operation Blessing, said the fish
provide a uniquely effective option for combatting diseases known to be carried
by the mosquitos.
"Mosquito bed nets are not as effective as they were
for most because the Aedes Aegypti sleeps at night,” he told the network. “They
don't bite often at night.”
In the U.S., health officials in several states have
confirmed human cases of the virus, none acquired locally. The disease can also
spread through blood transfusions and sex.
