In a new development, researchers have devised a more efficient and reasonable way of trapping adult mosquitoes and the deadly diseases that they carry like malaria and the West Nile virus.

It is called Prokopack and the Emory University (E-U) has filed a patent on a provisional basis on this mosquito aspirator. It uses a motor powered by battery to suck up live mosquitoes for analysis.

Prokopack has outperformed the current gold standard for resting mosquito surveillance – the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention in both filed and lab tests.

The Prokopack has a much longer range which allows it to collect many more mosquitoes as compared to the CDC-BP. It is also much smaller, lighter, cheaper and easier to build.

Gonzalo Vazquez-Prokopec, inventor and a post-doctoral researcher in environmental studies said, “This device has broad potential, not only for getting more accurate counts of mosquito populations, but for better understanding mosquito ecology.”

Public health officials have struggled for decades to conduct mosquito surveillance. One of the earlier methods was to expose some skin and count the number of bites. Later another method including the spraying of pesticides was brought into practice.