Today, the 20^th of August 2020, is World Mosquito Day, an event that has been going since 1897 when Sir Ronald Ross declared this day soon after his discovery that female mosquitoes transmit malaria. The fact that mosquitoes transmit malaria is common knowledge nowadays, along with the discovery that many other diseases are spread by mosquitoes, including some familiar ones such as Dengue and Zika virus, and maybe some that are not so familiar such as Chikungunya, Yellow Fever, Eastern Equine Encephalitis, West Nile Virus and Rift Valley Fever.

You might expect that with the advancements of science and knowledge over the past century we would either have eliminated these diseases or at least be winning the fight. And there have been some remarkable achievements, deaths from malaria are now almost half of what they were 20 years ago. Unfortunately, the decline in malaria deaths has stalled over the past couple of years, Dengue has been rapidly increasing worldwide over the past 30 years and Yellow Fever, which has had an effective vaccine since the 1930’s, has been making a comeback. There are lots of reasons for the lack of progress but one of the main causes has been the development of insecticide resistance. Limited development of novel insecticides has meant existing mosquito control tools are becoming increasingly ineffective, leading to the resurgence and spread of many of the most dangerous mosquito vectors of disease, such as Anopheles gambiae and Aedes aegypti.

Now, in 2020, 123 years since the first World Mosquito Day, COVID-19 has upended our world and the knock-on effects for vector control could be disastrous. We are now at even greater risk with reduced travel and access to countries in need of support and resources. As you can imagine from our own experiences with COVID-19 the restriction of community-based mosquito control operations and an already stressed health system significantly increases the likelihood and impact of outbreaks of mosquito borne diseases. It is therefore essential to keep the emphasis on vector control otherwise an already bad situation could be made much worse. The World Health Organization (WHO) Global Technical Strategy for Malaria and the Global Vector Control Response have developed operational guidance for maintaining health services in the context of COVID-19 and has been urging countries to maintain their malaria services. There are currently over 700,000 deaths a year from mosquito borne diseases and we need to remain focused to avoid this increasing and adding another crisis on top of COVID-19.

Fortunately, there are several dedicated organisations working on ways to tackle mosquito borne diseases, including IVCC and its partners from industry and academia. Supported with funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, UNITAID, UKAid, USAID, The Global Fund, Australian Aid and, Swiss SDC, IVCC has been central to the development of novel insecticides to tackle insecticide resistance. In addition, IVCC has been helping to fund and develop innovative new tools, such as Attractive Targeted Sugar Baits (ATSB) and improved application equipment for residual spraying in and around households to add to and enhance the toolbox of control tools required to achieve the elimination of malaria and potentially other mosquito borne diseases. As part of the Australian government-supported Indo-Pacific Initiative (IPI), a package of bite prevention tools including spatial and topical repellents and insecticide treated clothing are being tested for malaria control.  Much of the IPI work involves enhancing “Routes to Market” including a Market Access Landscape for the Indo-Pacific, providing a foundation for improved household and community access to life-saving vector control products.

Looking to the future we need to maintain and enhance the development of innovative and improved vector control tools to work towards a world free of mosquito borne diseases, just imagine how we might celebrate that momentous day.  IVCC is focused on this mission and continually adapting its technical and strategic focus, as we all must, so that we may realise the full benefit of the knowledge gained over the past century.

On Friday 21^st August, APLMA will hold the second of its Malaria Gamechangers roundtable series. It focusses this time on vector control and is co-sponsored by IVCC and RBM Partnership to End Malaria. The roundtable aims to engage senior policy-makers across the Indo-Pacific in exploring some of the new and existing vector control products that will be vital to achieving malaria elimination in the region by 2030.

The panel will also focus on the regulatory hurdles, as outlined in IVCC’s Regulatory Landscape Report, that must be negotiated swiftly if these products are to have the desired impact. Vasanthan John Paul, the author of the report and IVCC’s regulatory consultant, will join the panel to speak on regulatory issues and opportunities for improved access to vector control solutions.

On the panel, there will also be a number of representatives from companies that IVCC has enjoyed successful partnerships with for many years, such as Bayer Cropscience and Sumitomo Chemical Company. There will also be speakers from organisations and countries with whom it is important we strengthen our relationships in order to maximise the impact of our work in the region. Our co-sponsoring of the roundtable is itself also a small example of where we have been forging new relationships and collaborations, as we seek to strengthen our network in support of the Indo-Pacific Initiative (IPI), funded by the Australian Government’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade.

IPI’s overall aim is to develop a vector control toolbox for the Indo-Pacific region. We are approaching this by focussing primarily on tools for malaria control in Papua New Guinea and Cambodia. In PNG, we are working with the PNG Institute of Medical Research, Burnet Institute and James Cook University, to develop the capacity in PNG for testing new tools, build a national vector control stakeholder network and test products in the community. The priority product categories for testing in PNG are Indoor Residual Spraying (including eaves and verandas), Spatial Repellents and Larvicides. In Cambodia and Thailand, we are working with a partnership led by University of California, San Francisco-Malaria Elimination Initiative, involving CNM, AFRIMS and Kasetsart University amongst others, to evaluate Forest Packs as a means of delivering effective bite prevention tools (Insecticide Treated Clothing, Spatial Repellent and Topical Repellent) to forest-going populations. To support these two main areas of work, we are also partnering with Imperial College London to model the potential impact of new new tools on malaria in the region.

IPI is guided by an Advisory Group of experts based in the region or with significant experience therein. The Advisory Group is based on the principle of delivering through robust partnerships, and draws from IVCC’s trademark model for external expert engagement and scrutiny: the External Scientific Advisory Committee (ESAC). IPI sits under Objective 7 of the IVCC strategy, which aims ‘to capitalise on knowledge and innovation to address malaria and other vector borne diseases outside sub-Saharan Africa in order to maximise the impact of our work and the products being developed’. Now more than ever, if we are to expand our activity into new geographies with little ‘on the ground’ presence, we are reliant on networking and forging strong partnerships. Add the myriad ramifications of Covid-19 into the mix- not least restricted travel- and it becomes even more important to have trusted collaborations through which to deliver.

As IPI ramps up, IVCC further explicates its strategic approach to the Indo-Pacific region and new opportunities arise elsewhere, we will need to continue to think realistically about what IVCC can deliver and what is best done by partners. We are fortunate in these considerations that IVCC has always recognised the importance of delivering through strong partnerships and that this is built into the way that we operate.

If IVCC is to achieve its vision of ‘saving lives, protecting health and increasing prosperity by preventing insect-borne disease’, and if success is to be seen more widely across the vector control community in the fight against insect-borne disease, it is clear that success will depend on the strength of working with the right people, at the right time and via the right kind of collaborations.