Out-of-the-Box Innovations Against Malaria
Out-of-the-Box Innovations Against Malaria
Tags: Genetically modified mosquitoes, MalariaForeign Policy, 2025.
Malaria kills nearly 600,000 people every year, with 95 percent of deaths occurring in Africa. Most of them are children under the age of 5. While progress on curbing malaria has flattened in recent years, new scientific breakthroughs may bring the world closer than ever not only to controlling malaria outbreaks but potentially also to eradicating the disease. In this episode, we focus on the best mosquito control strategies to eliminate malaria. Host Henry Bonsu interviews Fredros Okumu, a professor at the University of Glasgow in Scotland and a scientist at Ifakara Health Institute in Tanzania. His research evaluates many of the latest tools to combat malaria, including next-generation insecticide bed nets, indoor residual sprays, and spatial repellants, also known as spatial emanators.
Then, reporter Paul Adepoju talks to scientists from the U.K.- and Tanzania-based Transmission Zero project. They have developed genetically modified mosquitoes that could dramatically reduce the transmission of malaria. Adepoju speaks with Dickson Wilson Lwetoijera, a leading entomologist also at the Ifakara Health Institute, as well as Nikolai Windbichler from Imperial College London, who leads the molecular genetics side of the Transmission Zero project.
