Mosquitoes are one of the deadliest animals in the world, infecting between 250-500 million people every year with a wide range of fatal or debilitating diseases, including malaria, dengue, chikungunya, Zika and West Nile Virus. Although scientists have learned a lot about them in recent years, they face a daunting task when it comes to identifying one mosquito from another. There are around 3,500 different species of them, and many look alike. Even a highly trained entomologist has to examine one for several minutes under a microscope to identify it accurately.
Scientists now have a new weapon against mosquitoes. Soumyadipta Acharya and his team of bioengineers at Johns Hopkins University have come up with a handheld tool for the rapid identification of the mosquito species. “It is a simple low-cost device, that pairs with a mobile phone, running an app—the whole system is called VectorCam,” Acharya, who is the graduate programme director, Centre for Bioengineering Innovation and Design at the Baltimore, Maryland-located University, told FE.
“Using AI algorithms that we have developed, the app lets someone with minimal training identify the specific species of mosquitoes, as well as the sex, and abdominal status—in a matter of seconds,” Acharya said. “These are essential parameters that are part of routine vector surveillance in districts in mosquito endemic countries, such as India, Bangladesh, Brazil, all countries in Africa,” he informed.
The development of VectorCam is a significant technological breakthrough with profound implications for public health, said Rajesh V Bendre, national technical head, Apollo Diagnostics. “Quick and crucial identification of the mosquito for effective vector control and disease prevention is crucial, as different mosquito species transmit different diseases. VectorCam can facilitate the collection and analysis of large-scale mosquito data. This information can be used to track disease outbreaks, monitor the effectiveness of control measures, and identify emerging threats,” he added.
To be sure, malaria cases in India have been declining, and the country has made significant progress in reducing the disease. The National Centre for Vector Borne Diseases Control, under the Ministry of Health & Family welfare, has been at the forefront for strengthening surveillance, treatment, prevention and control of malaria and other vector-borne diseases.
Controlling the spread of malaria relies on vector surveillance, a system where collected mosquitoes are analysed for vector species’ density in rural areas to plan interventions accordingly. According to Acharya, hundreds of mosquito traps are laid out in populated areas. Then, a health worker collects the catches from the traps and sends them to a central laboratory—where an entomologist looks at these specimens and tries to identify and list them.
The shortage of entomologists and this time-intensive process cause significant reporting delays, laments Acharya.
“Our innovation, VectorCam, is a virtual entomologist in your pockets that allows community members and community health workers to autonomously identify these thousands of specimens and report them digitally to a central platform for the district or state health officials to take specific control actions. It is a simple, AI-enabled tool that allows a highly skilled task to be now performed by community health workers,” he said.
“We recently concluded a randomised controlled trial in Uganda and Mozambique where we showed that rural community health workers with no prior experience in identification of vectors were able to run a robust vector surveillance programme that exceeded the performance of routine initiatives. India is definitely a country of interest, and we have started exploring collaborations with academic partners and research organisations in order to modify this to the Indian context,” Acharya added.
