International shipments of Wolbachia-Infected Mosquito Eggs – Towards Scale-up of World Mosquito Program Operations

The Wolbachia insect control method, employed by the World Mosquito Program (WMP), relies on introgressing Wolbachia through target Aedes aegypti populations to reduce the incidence of dengue. Since 2010 WMP has been producing Wolbachia-infected mosquitoes at numerous sites across the globe for release in 11 countries. As the technology has matured, greater focus has been placed on mosquito production at larger central facilities for transport to remote release sites, both domestically and internationally.

Of particular note is production of Wolbachia-infected mosquitoes at our Australian production facility for successful international deployments in Fiji, Vanuatu, Kiribati and Sri Lanka. This requires careful management of both production and supply-chain processes to ensure the quality, specifically hatch rate and Wolbachia infection rates, of mosquito eggs is maintained.

To ensure the cost-effectiveness and scalability of the Wolbachia method, these processes will be further refined to facilitate deployments from large central production facilities.