The Social Security System (Caja) saw more than 110,000 consultations and treated almost 50,500 people infected with dengue last year, the Caja told the press yesterday.

Eight people died in 2007 from dengue hemorrhagic fever.

In a press statement, Rosa Climent, head of medicine at the Caja, stressed the urgency for strengthening efforts to combat the mosquito-borne virus.

In addition to taking lives, the virus is digging heavily into the Caja's coffers. Social Security spent ¢4.16 billion ($8.3 million) last year on treating patients with dengue. Climent called for great prevention, saying that the Social Security System will continue to work with both public agencies and private firms to keep the fight going.

One example of the private sector's commitment, Climent said, is beverage company Florida Bebidas' “Barridas contra el dengue” (Sweep Up Dengue) program designed to help 20 of the most dengue-prone areas of Costa Rica.

“The program is a clean-up effort in which volunteers collect garbage such as empty bottles and sometimes old washing machines off the street. These can accumulate water and create a breeding ground for mosquitoes,” Caja spokeswoman María Isabel Solís said.

The project launched Sunday in the Cañas canton, in the northwestern province of Guanacaste, according to Carlos Francisco Echeverría of Florida Bebidas, and is set to continue this weekend in Liberia, the province's capital, and Belén, a town northwest of San José.

Meanwhile, international researchers and aid workers are racing to find a way to stop the spread of the virus, which mosquitoes pass to up to 100 million people each year, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

A group of British scientists say they have found a way to pre-empt the mosquitoes' strike, Wired Magazine reported. Scientists at the company Oxitec said they can decimate mosquito populations by breeding genetically modified male “terminator” mosquitoes and setting them loose to mate with wild females. Their offspring, the report said, would contain a lethal gene that would make them die young.