Norbert Lehmann

Meet Norbert Lehmann, a 76 year old retired dentist from Karlsruhe, Germany, who helped kickstart Brazil’s most successful anti-dengue campaign thanks to a bunch of kids and some margarine tubs.

After retiring in 2005, Norbert started a new chapter of humanitarian work in Complexo Da Maré, a favela in Rio de Janeiro. Initially he was there providing free dental service but when a 4 year old patient named Janine contracted dengue and died in her mother’s arms while waiting at the hospital, Norbert’s mission changed forever.

He couldn’t reconcile that if the family had known what symptoms to look for, Janine’s death could have been prevented. He knew education was the key but gang control inside the favella made it difficult for adults to come in and run programs. It wasn’t until he returned to Germany that a childhood memory sparked a solution.

Growing up Norbert played football with his friends in the Rhine, where there were lots of mosquitos. The kids would go home and complain to their parents who would alert the authorities of the worst affected locations. Thanks to tip-off, government helicopters would drop crushed ice infused with bacteria around those sites to reduce breeding. Norbert was convinced children in Brazil could do something similar.

In 2014 he hired local social workers inside Maré to educate children about dengue. Dozens of kids signed up to become 'Heroes against Dengue' and marched the streets in their bright yellow t-shirts educating the population on simple measures to combat mosquito-borne diseases.

Later that year when Zika broke out around Brazil, medical teams reported fewer cases inside Maré, proof that Norbert’s mission was working. Shortly after, the government trialled an anti-mosquito programme using the Wolbachia method, but when it failed to gain traction around the favelas, Norbert sent his young heroes to the rescue once again.

The teenagers started breeding mosquitoes in margarine tubs filled with Wolbachia, a bacteria that blocks the transmission of dengue to humans, and released the insects around different parts of the neighbourhood. Since 2015, cases have fallen by 95% in Rio, and the program is now being replicated across Brazil and other countries - a success driven by a group of kids and a German dentist