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Every year, as the monsoon arrives in India, so does dengue. Potholes filled with dirty water become ideal breeding grounds for the Aedes Aegypti mosquito, which spreads the viral disease. Although dengue symptoms are flu-like, it can be fatal in cases.

According to a study published in the journal Nature in 2013, India had the world’s highest dengue burden, with 34% of all dengue cases occurring here. In 2014, as many as 40,571 cases of dengue fever were registered in India and the toll was 137, as per a report of the National Vector Borne Disease Control Program. So far this year, 5,874 dengue cases have been reported and the toll is 19.

The terror of dengue haemorrhagic fever has spread wide. Before 1970, only nine countries had experienced dengue infections, but since then the number has increased more than fourfold and it continues to rise. According to a report of the World Health Organization, there are up to 50 million infections every year in the world, with 500,000 cases of dengue fever and 22,000 deaths, mainly among children.

In an attempt to explain dengue,Oxitec, a pest control company in the United Kingdom, made a short film featuring interviews with Haedes and Aegypta mosquitoes. In the video, Oxitec also introduces its genetically modified mosquitoes.

The basic technique is to dose male insects with radiation, making them sterile. By sterile, they mean that although the male does produce sperm and can fertilise the female’s eggs, their offspring are inviable – meaning, they die at an early stage of development. This way, without damaging plants and harming humans, dengue mosquitoes can forever be made extinct.