Mosquito action in Queensland to protect against dengue

" We’re not fearful of dengue anymore... It's a great relief for the community. " 

Cathy Zeiger – Councillor, Cairns

When we first released Wolbachia-carrying mosquitoes into the wild in north Queensland in January 2011, there was no guarantee this thing was going to work. All the testing suggested it should. Everything we’d done to this point told us that Wolbachia would establish itself in the local mosquito population. That’s what Wolbachia does. Yet we still weren’t sure. 

We first released mosquitoes – as 'Eliminate Dengue' – every week for ten weeks in Yorkeys Knob, a suburb on the outskirts of Cairns. Thankfully, we had the community on board. In fact, they were critical participants in the release. 

Five weeks after the final release, our monitoring teams found that 100% of the mosquitoes they tested at Yorkeys Knob carried Wolbachia. The ideal result. Better than we could have imagined. 100 percent! 

That was a good day. That was the beginning of what would eventually become the World Mosquito Program.