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Team:Valencia-CIPF/TheProblem
From 2013.igem.org
The problem
Many towns in Africa, Asia and America suffer from diseases like malaria, sleeping sickness or cholera, which are transmitted by mosquitoes and other insects and may cause hundreds of deaths every year.
In these environments, where hospitals and primary health centers are far away from more than half of the population and not all of them have access to healthcare, it is quite difficult to treat a person even when drugs are available. For that reason, one of the best possible strategies might be trying to prevent these insects from getting close to people. If a cheap, non-pollutant, harmless device was designed, every single family could have one in their houses, thus avoiding the insect stings and not requiring extensive healthcare.
At this point, our team has tried to develop a device which could be the basis to create an organism capable of repelling insects.
In these environments, where hospitals and primary health centers are far away from more than half of the population and not all of them have access to healthcare, it is quite difficult to treat a person even when drugs are available. For that reason, one of the best possible strategies might be trying to prevent these insects from getting close to people. If a cheap, non-pollutant, harmless device was designed, every single family could have one in their houses, thus avoiding the insect stings and not requiring extensive healthcare.
At this point, our team has tried to develop a device which could be the basis to create an organism capable of repelling insects.
