Mosquitoes
Some of the photos I took in Burkina Faso have been published in the German popular science magazine ‘P.M. Magazin’. The photos, depicting the controversial experiments with genetically modified mosquitoes, have been published in The Guardian, De Volkskrant, De Morgen and El País before. To find out more about the GMO mosquito project, click here.
To take a closer look at the article in P.M. Magazin, click on the photos above.
De Volkskrant, El Pais, De Morgen and The Guardian published Hidde Boersma’s piece on genetically modified mosquitoes in Burkina Faso. For this story, Hidde and I traveled to the Burkina Faso village of Bana, where we spent a week learning about the work of ‘Target Malaria’. In Bana, a radical experiment to genetically modify a strain of mosquito is ongoing. The main goal of the researchers? To stop mosquitoes from breeding malaria-carrying daughters.
‘Target Malaria’ is the Gates Foundation-backed organization that wants to genetically modify mosquitoes in order to combat malaria. In the small village of Bana, Burkina Faso, researchers are looking to change mosquito DNA, so that the mosquitos that can transfer malaria can only give birth to male baby mosquitoes, which will eventually mean that one type of malaria spreading mosquito will die out.
The plans of Target Malaria are contested. Western countries, where malaria is causing many people to die, have their doubts about ‘GMO’s’, ‘Genetically Modified Organisms’. Dutch biologist and journalist Hidde Boersma wrote about Target Malaria’s plans and efforts, and what it will mean if they are allowed to genetically modify mosquitoes in Burkina Faso.
The story was first published by Dutch medium De Volkskrant, both in their newspaper edition and their website. Online, an extensive online multimedia version of the story is visible, which boasts videos by Karsten de Vreugd and René Hoeksema and many of the images I took in Burkina Faso. After De Volkskrant, also De Morgen (Belgium), El Pais (Spain) and The Guardian (Great Britain) published the story. The creation of our story is made possible with financial support of the ‘Fonds Bijzondere Journalistieke Projecten’ and the European Journalism Centre. For a behind-the-scenes glimpse of our activities in Ouagadougou, Bobo-Dioulasso and Bana, you can check out this pinned Instagram Story!
The publication of the story about GMO mosquitoes comes a month after my photography debut in The Guardian, for which I photographed Kenyan women who are planning on leaving Kenya to work in Gulf states - despite abuse fears.
