The Valencia City Council leads a new "door to door" strategy for the control of the tiger mosquito in private properties and conducts a pioneering study with the University of Valencia (UV) and the pest management company for its biological control through of a sterility phenomenon .

In addition, it has promoted an agreement with the Association of Farm Administrators to make control actions in the private sector more efficient and is about to approve the new Mosquito Tiger Control Ordinance, which increases the monitoring capacity of this pest especially in private properties and incorporates all these novelties.

The Councilor for Health and Consumer Affairs, Emiliano García, values ​​the municipal strategy of "pedagogy" to raise awareness about the importance of controlling this population and assures Efe that "everyone" is willing to "collaborate."

Like other Mediterranean cities affected by the tiger mosquito in countries such as Italy or Greece, Valencia has launched the "door to door" initiative for pest control in the second half of the year, in order to select the areas with the highest incidence in the private sphere, and work on diagnosis and control, as well as sensitize owners .

Through specialized technicians , inspection visits in selected homes are coordinated to identify hatcheries and neutralize them and, especially, work is being done to train owners to avoid having those potential hatcheries in their landscaped spaces, terraces, patios, orchards or even garages.

With this project, the Valencia City Council leads a new strategy for the control of this sanitary pest through training and information activities to the public that avoids sources of breeding of this insect in its properties.

The City Council hopes to have at the end of the year the first results of a pioneering study developed with the Department of Parasitology of the Faculty of Pharmacy of the UV and the Lokímica company to implant a new biological control that causes sterility and causes the eggs not to hatch .

Specifically, we are working on the search for Wolbachia bacteria in the local populations of the tiger mosquito, since artificial infection of males with it and its subsequent mating with uninfected females causes a sterility phenomenon by a process called "cytoplasmic incompatibility" , which prevents the eggs after this mating from being viable.

This method has been tested experimentally and successfully in several continents and for its development in Valencia, the previous step is to know if the bacterium is naturally present in the specimens of the city and, if so, determine what type of Wolbachia it is.

Before the arrival of the species and its expansion in different areas of the eastern peninsula, in 2014 the Valencia Health Service launched an entomological surveillance network based on the installation and review of specific traps for monitoring the tiger mosquito in the city .

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