Brazil and Cuba are stepping up their efforts to tackle the Zika scourge, Russia Today reported Monday.

While several cities in Brazil will use drones to locate and destroy breeding grounds for the mosquito, Cuba is set to deploy a whole army to prevent Zika from reaching its territory, it added.

The drones have a very sharp eye. In San Paulo, they perform low-altitude flyovers to detect signs of the pest in gardens, on terraces and other places where it is known to breed. They then fumigate the colonies.

Brazil has almost met its target of inspecting 60 million residences across the country.

This adds to other efforts, such as massive armed forced deployment, to stamp out the infection. Some 40 percent of targeted locations have already been dealt with.

About 4,000 infants in Brazil have been born with microcephaly since October, whereas in 2014 there were fewer than 150 cases.

Cuban President Raul Castro assigned as many as 9,000 army troops to prevent the epidemic from reaching the country and urged Cubans to comb neighborhoods for the Aedes genus of mosquitoes which is said to carry yellow fever, dengue, and encephaliti
Source: MENA