ACCRA, April 15 (Xinhua) — Ghana has confirmed Anopheles stephensi as a new malaria-carrying mosquito for the first time, the Ghana Health Service (GHS) said on Saturday.
The GHS announced the news in a press release, saying that this species of mosquito was identified during routine nationwide malaria surveillance.
Describing Anopheles stephensi as a unique vector that breeds in ponds, swamps and all traditional common Anopheles breeding sites, the GHS said that “it survives extremely high temperatures during the dry season, when the Malaria transmission generally decreases,” claiming to have set up a task force to advise and coordinate its control in the country.
According to the World Health Organization, Anopheles stephensi is native to parts of South Asia and the Arabian Peninsula and has been detected in five African countries over the past decade.
For its part, the Ghana Food and Drug Administration announced on Thursday that it had granted approval for the R21 malaria vaccine from the University of Oxford to protect children aged between five and 36 months once morest the deadly disease. END
