RESEARCHERS ARE attempting to trap Ireland’s 16 known species of mosquitos to identify whether any disease-carrying breeds have infiltrated their numbers.
The Health Protection Surveillance Centre has asked Fingal County Council in collaboration with University College Cork to undertake the trapping and identification project in order to prepare for any changes in the mosquito population.
None of the existing Irish mosquitos is thought to carry vector-born diseases such as malaria, which is not transmitted person to person but requires a “vector” or carrier to spread. However there are concerns that increases in the ambient temperature could result in tropical diseases being carried by mosquitos in Ireland.
Researchers are in particular on the look-out for the Asian tiger mosquito, which was implicated in the spread of chikungunya fever, a disease which can result in multiple organ failure, in Italy in 2007.
Fingal has been chosen because of summer problems it has experienced with mosquito infestations.
