Burkina Faso halts Target Malaria project

The gov­ern­ment of Burk­i­na Faso has ordered the imme­di­ate halt of the Tar­get Malar­ia ini­tia­tive oper­at­ing in the coun­try. Tar­get Malar­ia had just begun its sec­ond field tri­al with genet­i­cal­ly mod­i­fied (GM) mos­qui­toes, aim­ing to gain knowl­edge and expe­ri­ence before mov­ing toward the release of GM mos­qui­toes with gene dri­ves at a lat­er stage.

GM mosquito release cut short

On 22 August, Burk­i­na Faso’s Min­istry of High­er Edu­ca­tion and Research announced the sus­pen­sion of “all activ­i­ties” of Tar­get Malar­ia and ordered the destruc­tion of remain­ing mos­qui­to sam­ples. The min­istry added that the initiative’s facil­i­ties con­tain­ing GM mos­qui­toes had been sealed on 18 August.

The sus­pen­sion came short­ly after Tar­get Malar­ia, in coop­er­a­tion with the the Insti­tute of Health Sci­ences Research (IRSS), start­ed a field tri­al on 11 August in the vil­lage of Sourouk­oudin­gan, Hou­et Province. The tri­al involved male-bias GM mos­qui­toes engi­neered to pro­duce almost exclu­sive­ly male off­spring. It was pre­sent­ed as a research step to meet train­ing and knowl­edge needs, with no direct ben­e­fit to the local pop­u­la­tion.

Tar­get Malar­ia stat­ed that all its activ­i­ties were car­ried out “in com­pli­ance with the nation­al laws of Burk­i­na Faso.” The Min­istry of High­er Edu­ca­tion and Research had announced the autho­ri­sa­tion of the Sourouk­oudin­gan field tri­al on 6 August.

Toward gene drive mosquitoes

The 11 August release was Tar­get Malaria’s sec­ond release in Burk­i­na Faso, fol­low­ing an ear­li­er tri­al with ster­ile GM male mos­qui­toes in 2019.

Accord­ing to the ini­tia­tive, the next step would involve gene dri­ve mos­qui­toes designed to sup­press pop­u­la­tions of Anophe­les gam­bi­ae, the main malar­ia vec­tor. How­ev­er, whether these gene dri­ves would work and what their poten­tial impacts would be is still high­ly spec­u­la­tive.

Widespread criticism

The Coali­tion for Mon­i­tor­ing Biotech­no­log­i­cal Activ­i­ties in Burk­i­na Faso (CVAB) has called for the sus­pen­sion of the sec­ond mos­qui­to trial’s autho­ri­sa­tion and demand­ed the pub­li­ca­tion of the doc­u­ments used as the basis for deci­sion-mak­ing. The Coali­tion raised con­cerns about eco­log­i­cal risks, eth­i­cal issues, and lack of trans­paren­cy.

“The prob­lem is the solu­tion pro­posed by Tar­get Malar­ia, which con­sists of elim­i­nat­ing the vec­tor using gene-dri­ve mos­qui­toes,” said Ali Tap­so­ba from Terre à Vie, a mem­ber of the Coali­tion. “This tech­nol­o­gy is high­ly con­tro­ver­sial, unpre­dictable, and rais­es eth­i­cal con­cerns. The impacts of gene-dri­ve organ­isms on health and ecosys­tems remain unknown and poten­tial­ly irre­versible.”

Civ­il soci­ety organ­i­sa­tions had already denounced the 2019 GM mos­qui­to release as risky, unjus­ti­fied, and uneth­i­cal.

Unmanageable risks of gene drives

Gene dri­ves are a high­ly con­tro­ver­sial tech­nol­o­gy that forces genet­ic traits, such as steril­i­ty or sex-bias, to be passed on to most off­spring, bypass­ing nor­mal inher­i­tance. Unlike pre­vi­ous GM organ­isms, they are designed to spread mod­i­fied genes through wild pop­u­la­tions.

Tar­get Malar­ia plans to use gene dri­ves to sup­press pop­u­la­tions of Anophe­les gam­bi­ae mos­qui­toes. How­ev­er, sci­en­tists have urged extreme cau­tion with regard to gene dri­ves, warn­ing of poten­tial­ly severe neg­a­tive impacts on bio­di­ver­si­ty and ecosys­tems. They also argue exist­ing biosafe­ty rules are inad­e­quate to man­age the unique risks posed by gene dri­ves, and that no release – includ­ing exper­i­men­tal – should go ahead.

Save Our Seeds is call­ing for a glob­al ban on the envi­ron­men­tal release of gene dri­ves through its Stop Gene Dri­ves cam­paign.

Calls for safer alternatives

Burk­i­na Faso is among the ten coun­tries most affect­ed by malar­ia, with more than eight mil­lion cas­es and more than 16,000 deaths record­ed in 2023, accord­ing to the World Health Organ­i­sa­tion. The Coali­tion for Mon­i­tor­ing Biotech­no­log­i­cal Activ­i­ties (CVAB) argues the coun­try should pri­ori­tise safe meth­ods of malar­ia con­trol rather than risky and exper­i­men­tal genet­ic tech­nolo­gies.

Tar­get Malar­ia has oper­a­tions in the UK, Italy, USA, Burk­i­na Faso, Ugan­da, and Ghana. The ini­tia­tive is seek­ing to open doors for gene dri­ve tech­nol­o­gy in var­i­ous forums, includ­ing the UN Con­ven­tion on Bio­log­i­cal Diver­si­ty and the Inter­na­tion­al Union for Con­ser­va­tion of Nature (IUCN).

Burk­i­na Faso has been under mil­i­tary rule since 2022. A planned tran­si­tion to a civil­ian gov­ern­ment has been post­poned. In Octo­ber, the New York Times report­ed that pro-Russ­ian influ­encers were spread­ing unsub­stan­ti­at­ed claims about Tar­get Malar­ia in the coun­try.

Image @David Petersen, Pix­abay