by Paula Daeppen, AWC Zürich, FAWCO NetWorks Coordinator 2005-2007
Malaria is one of the world’s greatest tragedies. FAWCO has had a special interest in malaria prevention since 2005 when we started our very successful malaria initiative “NetWorks”. This was FAWCO’s first global project and the precursor to today’s Target Program. At that time, the parasitic infection transmitted by mosquitoes was claiming up to 2 million lives each year, with children under 5 and pregnant women most vulnerable.
While significant progress in tackling malaria has been made with the distribution and use of treated bed nets, the spraying of insecticide in homes and anti-malarial medications, there are still over 400,000 deaths, mainly children, each year. Progress has plateaued with the current strategy and with increased resistance to therapeutic drugs and insecticides. The World Health Organization (WHO) has recently warned that interruptions in malaria control efforts due to the COVID-19 pandemic could increase malaria incidences and impact. A new modeling analysis by WHO predicts a doubling in the number of malaria deaths this year.
Promising Breakthrough in Fighting Malaria
Now a new discovery brings welcome hope. Dr Jeremy Herren and his team at the International Center of Insect Physiology and Ecology (icipe) in Kenya and the University of Glasgow have discovered what could become a natural method of malaria control – a microbe called Microsporidia MB. Found in wild populations of the malaria transmitting Anopheles mosquitoes in Kenya, the naturally occurring microbe stops the development of the malaria parasite in the mosquito. Dr Herren has also found that the microbe is passed between adult mosquitoes and also from a female mosquito to her offspring at high rates, while not killing or harming the mosquito host. The goal will now be to find ways to increase the proportion of mosquitoes that carry the symbiont in order to limit their ability to transmit malaria.
This exciting breakthrough, that could ultimately eliminate malaria, is the result of 5 years of intensive work by Dr. Jeremy Herren. Many of you will remember FAWCO friend, Dr. Hans Herren, World Food Prize recipient and Right Livelihood Laureate who was a keynote speaker at two of FAWCO's conferences. His Biovision foundation was FAWCO’s partner for our malaria initiative NetWorks and the recipient of the funds FAWCO raised for malaria prevention. Dr. Jeremy Herren is his son! Jeremy’s father, Hans Herren is credited with saving over 20 million people from famine in Africa when the African staple cassava was being destroyed by the mealybug. He did this by first searching the globe for a natural predator then breeding the parasitic wasp in a sterile facility, and then designing a special compressed air canon to gently release the fragile insects out of an ”insect bomber” flown by a former fighter pilot, spreading the insects over the continent of Africa.
I have no doubt that Dr. Jeremy Herren and his team will be equally inventive in pursuing his two main strategies; releasing Microsporidia spores en masse to infect mosquitoes and/or in infecting male mosquitoes in the lab and then releasing them into the wild to infect the females when they have sex! When asked about any downside to this new malaria blocking microbe, the response was; likely none, given that the symbiont exist in nature already, and just need to be increased across the population to stop the parasites transmission in a durable manner. The mosquitoes will still be there, but malaria will be reduced or gone without any genetic manipulation or pesticides needed. If the transmission falls below a certain level, the malaria parasite, Plasmodium, will disappear.
Sources:
BBC News: Malaria 'completely stopped' by microbe
Nature Communications journal: A microsporidian impairs Plasmodium falciparum transmission in Anopheles arabiensis mosquitoes