Fact Sheet: SC Johnson and Mosquito-Borne Disease Prevention
Products to Help Families
After inventing Raid® household insecticide in 1955, SC Johnson was the first major marketer of a DEET repellent formula, OFF!®, in 1957. Today, we make a wide variety of products to kill, control and prevent pests in the home, including cockroaches, ants, centipedes, spiders and more. We also market a wide variety of personal and area repellent products all over the world, using DEET as well as Picaridin.
Our pest control brands include Raid®, OFF!®, Baygon®, Autan®, Allout® and Ridsect®.
Educating for Awareness
A key element of SC Johnson’s disease prevention efforts is educating families about how to avoid insects that may carry diseases – and especially those like malaria and dengue that are transmitted by mosquitoes in some tropical climates. Through in-store programmes, collaborations with local government, product sampling and more, we work to educate about the causes of these diseases, and the critical importance of avoiding mosquito bites.
In addition, our mosquito education website offers tips, expert information and videos for families concerned about mosquitoes and the diseases they may carry..
Sponsoring Research and Business Models
SC Johnson is several years into a collaboration with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, sponsoring research to study the effects of spatial repellents in fighting exposure to malaria-infected mosquitoes. Other initiatives have sent scientists to countries including Ghana, Peru, Myanmar and Indonesia for first-hand research to improve products or develop new ones that will work even better for families.
At the same time, we invest in programmes designed to help make mosquito repellents more accessible to at-risk families. For example, a recent programme with The Coca-Cola Company is helping make repellents more available in rural Rwanda.
Past programmes included the Healthy Children, Healthy Homes™ programme in the early 2000s, which focused on increasing malaria prevention knowledge in South Africa. This community-based malaria education programme with South Africa’s National Department of Health, the Medical Research Council and RTI International reached more than a million people in South Africa. It then transitioned to be fully run by regional health departments.
Philanthropy to Support Families
Finally, SC Johnson has a long history of donating funds and products to combat mosquitoes that may carry diseases. As an example, in February 2016, we committed to donate at least $15 million to provide products and support for families fighting mosquito-borne diseases like dengue fever and Zika.
In June 2017, we completed that pledge. Over the course of 16 months, we had shipped more than 4.8 million units of SC Johnson repellent and insecticide products to NGOs and non-profit partners for distribution, along with donating funds to cover logistics, distribution and educational materials.