Coming Soon: A New Breed Of Mosquito Repellant

After more than 600,000 malaria deaths annually, with over 240 million affected and 25 years without a breakthrough, the World Health Organisation (WHO) just endorsed the first new weapon in the fight against mosquito-borne disease: repellent technology that creates invisible protective barriers around humans.

SC Johnson’s decade-long, $100 million engineering effort has produced spatial repellents, paper-sized devices that hang in homes and schools, releasing precisely engineered compounds that make entire rooms uninhabitable to disease-carrying mosquitoes.

The technology represents a fundamental shift from traditional protection methods to area-wide mosquito control. Unlike topical repellents or bed nets that protect individuals, these repellents create protective zones that “release an active ingredient which repels mosquitoes from a room.” Think air freshener, but for mosquito repellent instead of pleasant scents. You hang it up, it slowly releases chemicals that mosquitoes can’t stand, locking them out of said forcefield in indoor spaces.

“This breakthrough emerged from over a decade of intensive R&D, combining our deep expertise in volatile chemistry, controlled-release systems, and manufacturing engineering,” said Fisk Johnson, Chairman and CEO of SC Johnson. “We’ve invested more than $100 million in developing this technology platform, conducting rigorous clinical trials, and building the manufacturing infrastructure to deploy it at a humanitarian scale.”

The spatial repellent means SC Johnson figured out how to make a container that acts like a slow-release medicine capsule, but for mosquito repellent. Guardian units can last for up to a year.

Deployed at its Nairobi facility, SC Johnson installed two high-speed production lines specifically designed for spatial repellent manufacturing. These will produce up to 20 million Guardian units annually. The company plans to expand production capacity with a new manufacturing line in Pilar, Argentina, adding another 20 million units of annual capacity, reducing supply chain headaches while facilitating availability to regions most affected by malaria.

Clinical trials conducted across Indonesia, Peru, and Kenya have shown its effectiveness; it has up to a 33 per cent reduction in transmission risk.

The MENTOR Initiative’s CEO, Richard Allan, noted that over one billion people could benefit. “In 36 years of public health work, these are the first tools I’ve seen that have the promise of matching how people actually live. The technology could be a real game changer.”