Macquarie 50th Anniversary Award
The Macquarie 50th Anniversary Award funding will enable the World Mosquito Program to expand to more than 20 countries and inspire development on an even larger scale, accelerating the program to reach its goal of protecting 100 million people by 2023. The funding will also drive efficiencies in the delivery of the intervention so it will be cost saving for governments to implement in the future.
of the world’s population live in areas vulnerable to devastating mosquito-borne diseases
Expected to be protected by the World Mosquito Program by 2023
will be reached using the Award funding
Monash University’s World Mosquito Program takes a bold approach to protect global communities from mosquito-borne diseases. In this video we hear from Ms Bani, who has championed the program’s life-changing work in her own community in Kricak Village, Indonesia.
This video was filmed in 2020.
Monash University's World Mosquito Program has a bold goal: to protect 100 million people by 2023 from deadly mosquito-borne diseases, including dengue fever, Zika virus, chikungunya, and yellow fever. More than 40 per cent of the world’s population lives in communities vulnerable to these diseases.
Research shows around three billion people are at risk of contracting dengue fever alone each year, with estimates suggesting 390 million people are infected with this disease annually.
To address this, the World Mosquito Program (WMP) has developed an intervention that introduces a naturally-occurring bacteria called Wolbachia into the Aedes aegypti mosquito, the species most responsible for transmission of these diseases between people.
The intervention has so far been deployed by WMP in 12 countries. Now, the challenge is to scale it to cover three million at-risk people by the end of 2019, 100 million people within five years and 20 per cent of the world’s population within 10 years. The aim is to bring the cost of the intervention down to US$1 per person.
In FY2021, World Mosquito Program, working to protect communities around the world from mosquito-borne diseases, conducted a study to measure the efficacy of the Wolbachia method through a randomised controlled trial in Yogyakarta City, Indonesia. The study showed a 77% reduction in dengue incidence and an 86% reduction in dengue hospitalisations in Wolbachia-treated areas compared with untreated areas.
In FY2022, The Monash University’s World Mosquito Program reached a major milestone with the results of their landmark Wolbachia trials, conducted in Yogyakarta, Indonesia, being published in the New England Journal of Medicine. The results of the trial found that Wolbachia deployments amongst mosquito populations reduced incidents of dengue by 77% and dengue hospitalisation by 86%. The results set a new benchmark for the use of this sustainable method to combat the spread of dengue and other diseases.
The World Mosquito Program’s vision is of a world where everyone can live a healthy life – free from the fear and suffering caused by mosquito-borne diseases like dengue, Zika, chikungunya and yellow fever.
"Our project supplies hope by offering a way to prevent suffering caused by these diseases in developing countries around the world. It focuses on the mosquito itself to have the most impact, treating the problem at the source. Now that we have good evidence that the intervention is working, we want to tackle the problem at scale and deliver it to communities who need it most."
Professor Scott O’Neill, Director of the World Mosquito Program
