Malaria is one of the world’s deadliest diseases. It kills a child under the age of 5 every minutes, and over 600,000 people every year. This is a reality that SC Johnson is working hard to change, and has been through their continuous involvement and pioneering work in the fight against insect borne disease for over 60 years.

Global instances of malaria are on the increase due to external and environmental factors like insecticide resistance, increased global temperature and higher annual rainfalls, so the need to protect people is greater than ever.

Guardian™ was developed to help prevent the spread of, and potentially help eliminate malaria. Its incredible effectiveness, coupled with its ease of use and distribution means it will be more accessible and usable than most other interventions. It requires no power or maintenance from the user, is a simple fit-and-forget product and is therefore a more practical solution for the more remote rural communities where malaria is most prevalent.

Guardian™ is awaiting official WHO approval - but this takes time. Time people in malaria-stricken communities don’t have. Until this happens, SCJ’s objective is simple: to work with as many partners as needed to get as many Guardians™ into the communities that need them as quickly as possible, saving lives in the process.

Malaria is an entirely preventable disease. Yet, if you live in affected regions of the world, it is part of life and one of the leading causes of death, particularly in Africa. In rural communities most people will be infected several times a year, if they are lucky they will get treatment and survive. Many, despite the best efforts of local doctors, will not.

This disease has been killing people in Africa for thousands of years. Malaria needs an affordable, effective intervention solution to be made widely available and distributed to rural populations where infection is rife. Guardian™ was created to get a practical, usable, and highly effective intervention into these households and communities.

Guardian™ is a highly innovative, incredibly effective solution, with a formal WHO policy recommendation as a public health intervention it can reach the millions of people who are most vulnerable and who need it most. Until then, SCJ is working with its partners to distribute Guardian™ as widely as possible.

SC Johnson’s ultimate ambition is simple: Help Save Lives.

A necessary step was creating a product that would dramatically reduce the infection rates in communities. One that offered long-term, easy-to-use and highly effective protection from mosquito bites that could help safeguard entire villages, not just individual households.

Utilizing decades of research and product development, guided by SCJ’s mission to work for a better world, and working in collaboration with scientific institutions, NGOs and charitable foundations, SCJ helped fund the creation, trial and testing of this new solution to prevent the spread of Malaria.

Guardian™’s innovation lies mostly in simplicity. Finding the right combination of complex elements to deliver an intervention that would last a full year with the same potency throughout, while being simple to manufacture at scale, easy to install and use, which could be distributed globally at minimal cost. Guardian™ works with the airflow of enclosed, or partially enclosed spaces, using the circulation to distribute the repellent, so it can be simply placed and then protects entire families.

Guardian™ is currently being reviewed by the WHO. If approved, spatial repellents will be the first major malaria intervention to be recommended in over 25 years.

Guardian™ is a simple-to-use, highly effective spatial repellent product that has shown to reduce mosquito bite instances by 91%. Initial testing has shown it to be even more effective in some cases against malarial vectors, including against insecticide-resistant mosquitoes.

A slow-release repellent that, onced placed in a household, works with the airflow of enclosed, or partially enclosed spaces to protect a household from the mosquitos carrying malaria. Designed to be easy to distribute and simple to use, it requires no electricity, which many rural households don’t have, nor any ongoing maintenance (like a slow-burn repellent would) and is designed to be effective for a full year.

Multiple households within the same communities all using Guardian™ help protect the entire population, as the collective, cumulative use of these repellents creates a protection ‘bubble’ within the village or town – making the effectiveness even more complete.

Currently, over a million people are protected by Guardian™. Should the WHO recommend it as a public health intervention, an additional 20 million people could be protected every year.

Guardian™ never has, and never will have a profit motive for SC Johnson. It is an entirely not-for-profit product. They can’t wait to give it, at no cost, to as many people who need it as possible.

The development of the Guardian™ product delivered a low-cost, fit-and-forget mosquito spatial repellent - and a huge step towards the elimination of malaria. A single Guardian™ provides an entire household protection from mosquitoes for 12 months, with up to a 91% proven reduction in mosquito bites wherever it has been trialed. When used across an entire village, it can help provide a whole community with protection from infection.

The more places Guardian™ can be, the more people can be protected and the more lives can be saved. Following WHO approval, Guardian™ could protect over 20M people from malaria every year.

1M+ people protected by Guardian™ & Mosquito Shield™ to date

An overall 91% reduction in mosquito bites in households and communities

$30 Million committed funding by SC Johnson for spatial repellent production in Kenya

147 Congressional offices visited

5 New Partnerships Established: The Global Fund, United Nations Foundation, Kenya Ministry of Health, Tanzania Ministry of Health, Jakaya Mrisho Kikwete Foundation