This is my favourite modern public health experiment ever. After years of my life focusing only on this crappy #Aedes mosquito I could not be more happy to read this. But, hidden here amongst the incredible science is what it took to get this to work 1/5 theatlantic.com/science/archiv…
To make this successful, and when I say successful I mean wildly successful: 77% reduction of dengue in an urban setting! Urban is hard! They undertook some of the best #CommunityEngagement I have ever seen.2/5
They used 10,000 #volunteers to place containers full of mosquito eggs in people’s back yards. They had community meetings. They let people in to see the labs. They used Whatsapp engagement. Do you know what it takes to get everyone to agree to this? It’s amazing! 3/5
In Colombia, I was bitten by these little #Wolbacchia infected lady mozzies in their labs. They explained how they had to convince 90% of the community to allow them to release clouds of mosquitos from their vans before they would do it. That’s commitment to communities.4/5
We can learn from this! As we increase #vaccine supply to vulnerable people in vulnerable communities (MUST!) we need to get them on board. We don’t need to patronise, we need a #partnership . Maybe then we’ll also look back and say “holy crap look what we did to save lives”.
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