A potent dengue-busting formulation developed by the Defence Research & Development Organisation ( DRDO ) almost a decade ago is headed to Brazil and Mexico without its benefits being felt anywhere in India.

2014; no deaths

2014; 92 deaths

The Central Insecticides Board & Registration Committee (CIBRC) has disallowed the use of this formulation – known as ‘mosquitocidal trap’ – within India for want of reams of data by the DRDO pertaining to its efficacy, although trials conducted with help of Delhi Municipal Corporation limits between 2008 and 2010 proved to be not just effective but also environment-friendly and cost effective.The device, said to resemble a paint spray gun, is estimated to cost just Rs 100 apiece with the formulation.However, the same CIBRC has allowed the formulation to be exported through a Mumbai-based company named Alkyl Amines, which is looking at – and is most likely to – finding buyers in Brazil and Mexico.Sources in DRDO told Bangalore Mirror that delivering the data as asked by CIBRC would run up costs to “crores of rupees” as the studies, researches and field trials would have to be conducted over many more years to prove the efficacy of this formulation. “There are problems of funding as far as this is concerned,” said a senior DRL scientist.Instead, and unfortunately, he said the Mumbai-based private company is in a position to do that abroad in collaboration with companies there.This is the sad state of affairs in a country which has been found by an international study, to be grossly under-reporting dengue cases with the actual number of cases at a shocking 282 times that of the official figures.Two agencies under the DRDO umbrella – Tejpur-based Defence Research Laboratory (DRL) and Gwalior-based Defence Research & Development Establishment (DRDE) – developed the lure-and-kill formulation in 2005-06 that attracted female Aedes aegypti and Aedes albopictus mosquitoes (the ones spreading dengue through their bites) to lay eggs in predetermined stagnant waters. These eggs hatch into larvae but do not transform into adults as the insecticide component of the formulation destroys the larvae. The advantage of this technology is that one can actually choose where the female mosquitoes can lay eggs (as long as still water exists) and then ensure the destruction of the larvae there.To achieve this, the DRL and DRDE scientists replicated the natural pheromones emitted by the female mosquitoes which send signals to subsequent egg-laying females to settle in those waters to lay their eggs. Pheromones are chemical substances naturally produced and released into the environment by mammals or insects to allow others of its species to do the same things as earlier done by them.In this case, the scientists replicated the pheromones using cuticular hydrocarbons found on the mosquito’s body surface, which acted as the natural pheromones. These acted as beacons to ‘invite’ female mosquitoes to lay eggs in particular water-based locations – only for the subsequent larvae to be destroyed.DRDO scientists fittingly call it a kill-at-source solution to the dreaded disease, which can also develop into the Dengue Haemorrhagic Fever (DHF), a fatal condition.Dr Vijay Veer, director, DRL, confirmed to Bangalore Mirror: “Alkyl Amines in Mumbai has this technology (through transfer of technology from DRDO) and got CIBRC permission to export. (But) CIB permission for use in India is not available.”Dr Veer said DMC had discussions with DRDO on procuring the mosquitocidal trap six years ago so it could put the spray to good use to eradicate the disease. But the CIBRC prohibition has put paid those efforts.Some hope has come through the office of Dr Manas Mandal, director general of life sciences, DRDO, in Delhi.Dr Mandal could not be reached but his officials, who did not want to be named, said the mosquitocidal trap would continue to be improved upon in the DRDE and DRL labs over the next few years.The scientists have not given up. They are trying their best to meet the CIBRC requirements so this will be available to people in this country to eliminate Dengue.The urgency surrounding this emanates from an international study that has sounded alarm bells over the way dengue is being managed in India by the government bodies. The study Economic and disease burden of dengue in India published in American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene in October 2014 has proved with evidence that between 2006 and 2012 the annual average number of dengue cases in the country was 57,78,406 as against the mere 20,474 cases given out by the National Vector Borne Disease Control Programme — 282 times the official figure.The study has fixed India’s dengue cost burden at US$ 1.1 billion a year based on medical costs and income per man lost at work.■ In Karnatakacases in■ In Indiacases in