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Forecasting Healthy Futures Discusses Scaling Wolbachia Replacement Technology to Block Dengue Transmission with Oxitec CEO, Grey Frandsen

In a discussion with Forecasting Healthy Futures, Oxitec's CEO Grey Frandsen discusses the company’s latest milestone: breaking ground on the world’s largest Wolbachia mosquito facility. As part of Oxitec’s Sparks™ platform, this facility will accelerate the global scale-up of Wolbachia replacement technology, a proven, sustainable method of limiting mosquitoes’ ability to transmit dengue. 

Can you tell us about dengue and why Oxitec is working to address this issue specifically?

FRANDSEN: The world is experiencing a dengue crisis. Last year, the World Health Organization highlighted that cases were the highest on record, most likely in the hundreds of millions. Climate change is driving the spread of invasive Aedes aegypti mosquitoes into new territories, and existing tools are failing to keep pace – innovative, climate-resilient, sustainable solutions are urgently needed, at scale, to mitigate the worsening effects of climate change on the spread of dengue.

In forging a path for new mosquito technologies to combat Aedes aegypti, Oxitec has led the way in developing and scaling good mosquitoes to fight disease-spreading mosquitoes. With two decades of innovation, pilots and regulatory approvals, we’re now scaling up two technologies to meet this growing challenge: Friendly™ mosquitoes to suppress Aedes aegypti, and Sparks™ Wolbachia mosquitoes to block dengue transmission.

Oxitec’s Friendly™ technology is highly targeted and effective in reducing biting and disease transfer of mosquitoes in urban environments, serving both public and private customers. Sparks™ Wolbachia mosquitoes will complement this solution, providing an area-wide intervention for governments.

Oxitec just announced it broke ground on the world’s largest Wolbachia mosquito facility in Brazil. Can you tell us more about the facility and why this is significant?

FRANDSEN: Oxitec already operates the world’s biggest mosquito factory, supplying Friendly™ Aedes technology – the world’s first commercially scaled mosquito-base suppression technology – to communities, businesses, schools, hospitals and other customers across Brazil seeking effective mosquito-control.

Now, we’re leveraging our proven infrastructure, advanced manufacturing, and implementation systems into building Brazil’s largest Wolbachia production facility. Wolbachia is already proven to reduce dengue transmission in communities – we’re excited to be playing our part in helping make this solution available to a larger number of communities.

What makes this significant is scale. With this facility, we’ll be able to protect up to 100 million people a year from dengue—just from this one site. And we’re building it in Brazil, a country on the front line of the global dengue crisis, so we can deliver this technology to the communities that need it most, in Brazil and globally, leveraging Oxitec’s global distribution network.

What is Wolbachia Replacement Technology? Is it safe?

Wolbachia Replacement Technology – or WRT – is a natural, safe and proven method that uses mosquitoes carrying the Wolbachia bacterium to reduce the spread of dengue. When these mosquitoes are released into a community, Wolbachia spreads through the mosquito population and blocks the viruses they carry. Over time, this reduces the mosquitoes' ability to transmit disease.
It’s been tested extensively, including in a landmark trial in Indonesia that showed a 77% reduction in dengue cases and an 86% drop in hospitalizations. Regulatory bodies worldwide have reviewed it, and it’s been safely used in many countries.

What’s your hope with scaling WRT?

FRANDSEN: Ultimately, our mission is to protect one billion people from dengue. The science is there. Now the challenge is scale. That’s what the Sparks™ platform aims to achieve – taking a proven technology and building the infrastructure and partnerships to deliver it affordably, at speed, and at scale. Our aim is that, by scaling Wolbachia, we can deliver widespread, lasting impact to communities most vulnerable to dengue, helping address an urgent public health challenge.

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Blogs / News / Uncategorized - 04/10/2025

Our Take | Refreshed Goals for the Climate and Health Movement Heading into 2025

As a matter of some urgency, our loosely organized but highly engaged and growing coalition of climate and health advocates needs to know how we answer the questions: What's next? What exactly is it that we want to achieve?   

Author: Kelly Willis, Global Lead, Forecasting Healthy Futures Consortium

By now, we’ve all had a chance to absorb the outcomes of COP29 in Azerbaijan and reflect on the gains we’ve made in moving health closer to the center of climate discourse. One of the most significant gains, of course, being the establishment of the Baku COP Presidencies Continuity Coalition for Climate and Health.

As Stefan Anderson wrote for Health Policy Watch, “The coalition’s key achievement… is significant: after decades of fighting, health advocates and WHO officials will no longer have to relitigate the importance of health as a central concern in climate talks.”

Where will we now direct the time and energy we’ve been spending over “decades of fighting”, just trying to get health on the UNFCCC map?

The question reminds me of one Minister of Health Chiponda of Malawi asked a room full of delegates at this year’s United Nations General Assembly in New York, in a meeting convened by the COP28 Presidency. “What next after ‘Health Day’?” she asked, referring to last year’s milestone December 3 event in Dubai. “Is it going to be Health Week? Health Month? What exactly is it that we want to achieve?”

As a matter of some urgency, our loosely organized but highly engaged and growing coalition of climate and health advocates needs to know how we answer that question.

Of course, there is no shortage of worthy climate policy goals to pursue in the interest of global health. We’ll continue to push for integrating health in NDCs and ensuring health indices in the global goal on adaptation. We’ll work to see that health-determinant sectors also adapt and become more resilient. We’ll pursue health co-benefits by promoting mitigation in energy, transport, agriculture, food, and other sectors. We should certainly collaborate to identify further action opportunities in all of these areas.

But maybe a definitive starting point would be to establish a global goal for climate finance to support health adaptation initiatives in developing countries.

For all the disappointment around the grossly inadequate $300B target for climate financing negotiated in Baku last month, we shouldn’t lose sight of the opportunity it affords the sectors that most convincingly make a compelling investment case. I can think of few sectors where those funds could have as much impact as in public health.

How much of that $300B should be used to protect lives from the impact of climate change by addressing worsening climate-sensitive disease? How much of it should be used to build resilient health systems and protect against future impact? To fund early warning and response systems? To improve the underlying health of our most vulnerable populations?

Forecasting Healthy Futures invites more urgent dialogue around refreshed goals for the climate and health movement. It’s one of the things we hope to do in earnest at our next Global Summit, scheduled for April 8 -10 in Rio de Janeiro.

Please reach out to see how you and your organization can be involved in our planning!

Register here to participate in person or virtually at our 2025 Forecasting Healthy Futures Global Summit.

Blogs / News - 12/11/2024
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