10 years of fighting dengue in Brazil

It has been a decade since the World Mosquito Program (WMP) introduced its sustainable and long-term Wolbachia method to Brazil. Since those first releases in Rio de Janeiro in 2014, WMP Brazil has engaged more than one million people in the country, carried out releases in eight different cities (with three more starting early next year), and protected more than four million people's lives from dengue, Zika and chikungunya. 

As dengue fever cases surge across Brazil in 2024, WMP and Fiocruz are joining forces to battle mosquito-borne diseases nationwide. A formal partnership between the two organisations will dramatically expand access to our Wolbachia method across the country. Work on what will be one of the biggest mosquito production facilities in the world, in Curitiba, southern Brazil, is well underway, with the expectation it will be fully operational by April 2025. It will produce about five billion mosquito eggs annually at a rate of up to 100 million per week in the initial stages.

Results from Niterói, our first fully protected city in Brazil, also show great promise for the year ahead. Cases have dropped to their lowest in 20 years and by almost 90%, despite the global surge of dengue this year.

There has been amazing progress over the past decade and although there's still much more to be done, optimism is high as we look to scale-up and turn the tide against dengue fever.