The Mosquitoes are Fighting Back: Responding to Growing Malaria Threat in Support of African Leadership.
Perspective from Grey Frandsen, Oxitec’s CEO
I’ve spent the past days with members of my team in Kigali, Rwanda, attending the annual meeting of the Pan-African Mosquito Control Association (PAMCA). This has been a unique and inspiring opportunity to meet with Africa’s leading public health, malaria and mosquito experts. In my conversations there and in other cities in East Africa this week, I’m energised by the depth of knowledge, expertise and passion of my fellow attendees. A common thread runs through all these conversations: Africans are dedicated to delivering and leading the elimination of mosquito-borne diseases on the continent.
The public health and vector control community in Africa has played a central role in delivering many years of consistent success in reducing malaria incidence across the continent. Tens of millions of lives – mainly children - have been saved. But this progress is at risk of stagnating, as malaria-spreading mosquitoes develop resistance and adapt their behaviour to overcome the best efforts of mosquito control authorities. A recent Science Magazine article raised the alarm, quoting a Mozambican vector control expert who warns that “[t]he mosquitoes are fighting back.”
Layered over this looming crisis, the recent arrival of the invasive Anopheles stephensi – an urban species, in contrast to other malaria vectors - in the Horn of Africa, and now beyond, is predicted to trigger malaria epidemics in Africa’s cities, where more than 120 million people are predicted to face this future threat.
Experts warn of a looming public health catastrophe if new measures aren’t developed rapidly.
We’re at a pivotal moment in history, and to let progress slip would be tragic. So how do we regain the momentum? From my conversations with regional and global professionals and experts, it’s more evident than ever to me that more mosquito management tools are urgently required - we’re too reliant on the few available right now. Regulatory authorities in Africa are being powered up to ensure that new technologies are safe for people and the environment. The experts on the ground are building capacity to deploy new tools. And a new wave of technology developers is seeking to provide those new tools.
That’s why I’m proud of where the Oxitec team comes in. We’ve spent the last ten years operating in dengue-impacted Brazilian urban communities, where we have demonstrated the effectiveness of our Friendly™ mosquitoes in delivering a new level of management of the dengue fever-spreading Aedes aegypti. These are dense, complicated urban environments, just like where Anopheles stephensi will thrive in Africa. Our Friendly™ Aedes is approved as safe for people and the environment - Brazilian regulatory authorities issued full commercial approval of the product in 2020. Our just-add-water egg release approach is simple, flexible and easy. And we’re selling this solution to cities, businesses and households in Brazil to empower a broad coalition of stakeholders to participate in this urban fight against mosquitoes, taking singular pressure off of governments which are often ill-equipped to handle the sheer size of the challenge. Following a successful targeted product launch in the state of São Paulo during the 2021-2022 mosquito season, we’re now in the midst of launching nationally. Our new state-of-the-art production facility is ramping up. Multinational companies, transportation hubs, and soccer (football!) clubs have placed orders for the coming season. We’re partnering with Brazil’s leading pest control companies, who will help us to reach across the entire country, to businesses and communities seeking better, more sustainable control of this deadly mosquito.
We’re now bringing that depth of experience, our technology platform, and a commitment to trust-centered collaboration to the fight against malaria. We’re developing a Friendly™ Anopheles stephensi, working in close partnership with experts in Djibouti, where this invasive mosquito has caused an explosion of urban malaria. In Rwanda, and in discussions yesterday with the leadership of the world-renowned Ifakara Health Institute in Tanzania, it’s clear that Anopheles stephensi is a major and pressing concern across much of the continent, and organizations are working feverishly to respond.
And we’re in a race against this spreading threat. In the face of faltering mosquito control, with new malaria threats looming across Africa, we need to arm those on the ground with the best possible tools to protect the people they serve. In our view, global, top-down policymaking isn’t going to transform the malaria fight.
As a global community, we have a responsibility to do more, better and faster to support our peers’ leadership on the continent, and that includes responding to the overwhelming demand for new technologies to be deployed as quickly as possible.
For a global response to be effective, we need to listen to the voices of African experts in vector-borne disease-endemic countries – they have a unique understanding of what it will take to eliminate malaria in their regions, and we should be ensuring that they have effective options available to help them succeed. This week’s meeting in Kigali was the perfect opportunity to hear directly from those leading the charge, for which we thank PAMCA, whose dedication and leadership provide such an important forum for engagement between African leaders and technology providers like us. Thank you, also, to the inspiring community of African experts with whom we’ve met this week.
Our part of this - developing a new, safe, sustainable and effective solution for Anopheles stephensi – is being undertaken with support from a global coalition, but our commitment is firmly focused on supporting African leadership as we prepare this important new technology for their use.
Back to work. We don’t have time to spare.