Company Overview

Syngenta is one of the world's leading companies with more than 24,000 employees in over 90 countries dedicated to our purpose: Bringing plant potential to life. Through world-class science, global reach and commitment to our customers we help to increase crop productivity, protect the environment and improve health and quality of life. Syngenta is listed on the Swiss stock exchange (SYNN) and in New York (SYT). For more information about us please go to www.syngenta.com.

Syngenta has three main businesses:

• Crop Protection offers a wide range of herbicides, fungicides and insecticides as well as products for seed treatment.
• Seeds provide seeds for corn, soybean, diverse field crops and vegetables.
• Lawn & Garden has many activities, including seeds and young plants for flowers, growing media and chemical control products. This division also includes Vector Control which offers products covering a range of applications for malaria prevention in the public health sector.

Malaria Profile

Many serious infectious diseases are transmitted by insects. Syngenta products make it possible to control these ‘vectors', thus protecting people from diseases such as malaria.

As a worldwide supplier of insecticide technologies, Syngenta works closely with global health organizations, aid agencies and research institutions to ensure that its vector control products are available and accessible in affected areas, and that training is provided in the products' safe and efficient use.

Cooperation exists at a number of levels: evaluating efficacy; supporting product stewardship; providing emergency assistance; monitoring resistance; developing new tools to combat vectors.

Syngenta's ICON® CS for indoor residual spraying and ICON® Maxx net treatment are backed by reseach and development expertise of one of the world's leading pest control technology providers; they are formulated to rigorous standards of quality and tested in over 100 separate studies to ensure environmental and health protection when used according to labeled directions.

Initiatives and projects

Through the ICON® Academy education and training program, and in cooperation with RTI International, Syngenta runs training courses on indoor residual spraying for malaria mosquito control. In 2008 more than 9000 people in Sub Saharan Africa attended the program, learning how the ICON® products can safely and effectively control the mosquitoes that transmit malaria. In a project in Cameroon focused on integrated vector management, innovative combinations ICON® and ACTELLIC® products are being evaluated to treat mosquito nets and indoor surfaces, for spraying vegetation near houses, and to control breeding-grounds in rivers.

There is growing concern that mosquitoes are becoming increasingly resistant to pyrethroid-based insecticides. Syngenta is collaborating on this particular challenge with the Innovative Vector Control Consortium (IVCC), funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Together with the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, a member of the IVCC, Syngenta is developing a long-lasting non-pyrethroid indoor residual spray for broader and more effective protection against mosquitoes, and further strengthen the ICON® range in an integrated program.. Syngenta and IVCC are also collaborating in another project to identify novel areas of chemistry which will allow the sustainable control of insect vectors long into the future.

Roll Back Malaria

Syngenta supports Roll Back Malaria, a joint project to fight malaria launched in 1998 by the World Health Organisation (WHO), the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF), the UN Development Programme (UNDP) and the World Bank. This initiative aims to halve the incidence of malaria by 2010. Syngenta experts are represented in various RBM working groups, including those looking at best practices to ensure the correct and regular use of mosquito nets treated with insecticides.