Management Sciences for Health Tapped to Study Costs to Control Mosquito-borne Disease Outbreaks in Latin America and Asia

Arlington, VA—January 31, 2022—Management Sciences for Health (MSH) today announced that it has been awarded a contract to examine what countries are willing to pay to use the Wolbachia pathogen to control outbreaks of dengue, chikungunya, and the Zika virus in Latin America and Asia.

The study, funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, will analyze the willingness of public and private payers to use the naturally occurring bacteria to control outbreaks of the mosquito-borne diseases, which have been rising in recent years, sickening and killing people, and creating an economic burden of billions of dollars to families, health systems, and economies more broadly.

MSH experts will review health budgets, conduct literature reviews, and survey vector control managers and private and public payers as part of its fact finding. MSH will generate a range of financing approaches and recommendations for implementing the mosquito control technique, which has been shown in recent published RCT results to effectively reduce transmission of dengue when Wolbachia-carrying mosquitoes are released and spread within a population.

Recommendations from the project will help impacted countries identify options to most efficiently and effectively use their resources to control outbreaks.

More information about MSH’s health financing work is available here.