View/download the Tech Updates highlighting vector biology and control news, publications and resources.

Given the breadth of vector control related literature, we are unable to include all relevant work. These updates are intended to focus primarily on Anopheles biology and a subset of control topics with global relevance.

Any views expressed in the updates do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of IVCC. In many cases, we directly quote sections of published work. Mention of trade names or commercial products is solely for the purpose of providing specific information and does not imply recommendation or endorsement by IVCC or its funders.

View/download the Tech Updates highlighting vector biology and control news, publications and resources.

Given the breadth of vector control related literature, we are unable to include all relevant work. These updates are intended to focus primarily on Anopheles biology and a subset of control topics with global relevance.

Any views expressed in the updates do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of IVCC. In many cases, we directly quote sections of published work. Mention of trade names or commercial products is solely for the purpose of providing specific information and does not imply recommendation or endorsement by IVCC or its funders.

The scientific community is divided on whether or not we have a chance to achieve malaria eradication. Some argue that the task is too enormous. That lack of products, lack of access, lack of political drive or lack of funds will stop the downward trend of malaria. Some even predict a darker future with a potential resurgence of the disease.

On the other hand some, like Bill Gates, believe that it can be achieved within 15 years with the right resources allocated to the task.

In the end nobody is absolutely right or wrong. Nevertheless there are a few things that are certain:

• If we don’t try to eradicate malaria it will certainly not happen and people in resource poor countries will carry on dying or being socially impaired by this disease
• Aiming for eradication implies a multidisciplinary approach including medicine, vector control, and specialised programs in malaria endemic areas
• It will not happen if there is not enough political and financial support until the job is done

The IVCC team is on the side of those who believe eradication can be achieved. We also have an acute understanding that it will not be a ‘walk in the park’. All our efforts are directed toward releasing new vector control products and ensuring access to them. This is important, because vector control is already identified as one of the most cost effective solutions to controlling malaria by preventing transmission. The downside is the rapid spread of resistance against most of the insecticides currently in use.

That’s why IVCC is working hard with a wide and diverse group of partners to find new solutions, either by re-purposing insecticides already available in other markets, or by engineering brand new insecticides dedicated to public health.

We are not complacent, but we do have solid reasons to be proud:

• We have passed some key milestones in our product development timeline. The horizon is not the horizon anymore, we can start seeing when and how these new products will be made available.
• There is a fantastic group of innovative people and organizations who have decided to work with us and commit time and development resources to this great cause.
• We are supported by committed funders such as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, USAID, UKaid and the Swiss Organization for Development and Cooperation.

So, do I believe we can achieve eradication? I do, but only if all the stakeholders in the battle against malaria work together to make it happen. No-one can do it alone. But together we can turn the vision of eradication into a reality.

Sitting snugly in the shadow of Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania sits the Kilimanjaro Christian Medical University College. Based at the college is PAMVERC, where a team of scientists works collaboratively across a number of organisations, such as London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and IVCC, to test new innovations in vector control, mostly malaria-focussed.

Even though we know how to prevent malaria, it still kills over 600,000 people each year. The vast majority of these are children under the age of five, and pregnant women.  Insecticide treated bed nets and indoor residual spraying of insecticides have and will continue to save thousands of lives every year; however, as with any monotherapy (only one class of chemistry is available for use in bed nets), resistance is starting to seriously take its toll.  We are seeing resistance to pyrethroid insecticides and other classes of chemistry almost everywhere we look for it, and in some locations in Africa complete failure has been observed. This is not a new story but it is an increasingly frightening one. Insecticide resistance is now reaching the tipping point. (Watch the IVCC video here for more information)

The good news, however, is that even when insecticides fail, the physical barrier of a net continues to provide some level of protection from malaria transmission, so continued net use is important.  IVCC’s mission and focus since its inception in 2005 has been to work across multiple stakeholders, especially industry, to catalyse innovation in vector control and bring new classes of insecticides to market.  New products are starting to become available or are in the product development pipeline at a well-advanced stage. Watch this space!

However, our focus is beginning to shift from managing innovation to managing time from discovery to impact.  I recently asked two different highly respected scientists in the field of malaria and neglected tropical disease research what a complete failure of pyrethroids in bed nets would represent in terms of lives lost and the estimates were staggering—somewhere between 70,000 and 150,000 per year.  Any number of preventable deaths is completely unacceptable, but these types of numbers defy belief and really raise the level of urgency and responsibility.  Today, from discovery to impact for a new insecticide takes about 12 years.  We have a number of new chemistries just entering the development phase, which means that, if we take a normal course to market we will not see an impact until 2024/2025.

What if all the different players in the value chain agreed to do something creative and disruptive so that we can make new life-saving public health insecticides available by 2020—just five years?  This is feasible, and could save many thousands of lives.

We know how to accelerate the development of experimental products when lives are at stake—the Ebola crisis has demonstrated this.  So, we in the malaria community need to take full responsibility and apply the same principles and urgency to solving the malaria problem.

Novel drugs and vaccines are in the research pipeline, but vector control is and will continue to be the foundation of malaria management for the foreseeable future. Can we rise to the challenge of maintaining or improving on the performance of long-lasting insecticide treated nets and indoor residual sprays and getting them into the hands of those that desperately need them in five years or less?

As I discovered recently, while visiting Forde Abbey, a 12^th century monastery in Dorset, the word about malaria seems to be getting out.

When asked about what I do for a living, I used to expect to start every response with a short explanation of malaria, mosquitoes, insecticides, bed nets and vector control. But this is happening less frequently these days. The general public often knows the basics about malaria and there is an expectation that the challenge of malaria is being managed and a solution is just around the corner.

Just around the corner may be a little optimistic but it certainly it is in sight.  In 2000, <3% of the population at risk from malaria had access to an insecticide treated net; today that number is about 50%.  In the last fourteen years, there has been an estimated 50% global decline of mortality rates. This is something to celebrate, of course, but a staggering 580,000 people still died of malaria in 2013.

The World Health Organization’s new malaria targets are ambitious—to reduce malaria mortality rates and case incidence by ≥90% by 2030, to eliminate malaria from ≥ 35 countries by 2030, and to bring us ‘as close as possible to global eradication.

To achieve this, novel insecticides, drugs and vaccines are essential. IVCC’s mission is to build a toolbox of vector control solutions that can combat insecticide resistance. When IVCC was formed ten years ago, our biggest hurdle was to build partnerships with the major agrochemical industry companies and work with them to identify novel chemistry for public heath use.

Four and a half million compounds and 27 chemical classes later, that challenge has now been replaced with the need to find significant funding to take three new interventions ‘across the finish line’.

In 2013, $2.7 billion was spent on malaria through international and domestic funds. But an estimated $5.1 billion will be needed annually if we are to ensure that malaria ceases to have a devastating impact on people’s health and livelihoods around the world.

So what funding does IVCC need over the next ten years to complete its mission?

It takes much the same process to get a novel insecticide registered and into the right hands as a new drug; chemistry, efficacy, formulations, toxicology, environmental impact and chemistry, registration fees etc. are all needed to provide safe and effective products.

I am very optimistic about the life-saving potential of the IVCC product pipeline, thanks to the incredible support of funders such as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, UKAID, USAID, Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation, as well as our industry partners such as Syngenta, Bayer, Sumitomo and BASF.

If our current funders ‘stay the course’ until 2025, we need to find an additional $100m, 70% of this in the next four years. I think we can do this, but it will not be easy.

Today we work closely with committed and motivated funders, but there are other sources of funding that could play a part in eradicating malaria.  What about the private sector?   Companies with long-term growth strategies for sub-Saharan Africa, could make a contribution to saving lives and growing the African economy, and at the same time building their brands and repetitional capital.

Are there any senior industry executives out there with the vision to see the value of being a partner in this incredible and winnable fight to eradicate malaria?