Malaria is still endemic in more than 90 countries around the world and causes around 630,000 deaths each year. If vaccines are the intervention that could eliminate the disease, despite advances in research, there is currently no effective one. Transmitted by the bite of Anopheles mosquitoes, P. falciparum and P. vivax are responsible for more than 90% of all cases and 95% of malaria-related deaths worldwide. Most cases and deaths occur in sub-Saharan Africa, but half the world’s population is at risk of contracting the disease.
“Physical” means of prevention such as mosquito nets and insecticides are the best tools against the disease.
The mosquito net with 2 or more insecticides should have been generalized a long time ago
This is indeed the position of these Irish experts who demonstrate here that thousands of people have needlessly contracted malaria due to a “failure of public health policy”. Mosquitoes are also evolving, and have evolved to tolerate pyrethroids, the first-line class of insecticides in the prevention of malaria. This is why Professor Gerry Killeen, an expert in pathogen ecology, today reveals the results of a large-scale trial of mosquito nets treated with two insecticides.
The test reveals that a net treated with 2 insecticides rather than 1, clearly demonstrates the effectiveness of the combination on the disease burden caused by malaria in rural Africa. Because mosquitoes have evolved to tolerate pyrethroids, children sleeping under mosquito nets treated only with this insecticide are still at very high risk of malaria.
- The incidence of the disease is estimated at once a year on average, ie twice as much as in children protected by a mosquito net treated with 2 insecticides;
“Such nets with 2 or more insecticides should have been approved long ago. Because by using 2 or more insecticides, these nets can decisively eliminate insecticide-resistant variants of mosquitoes before they have a chance to multiply, thus preventing resistance from becoming established in entire populations of mosquitoes. mosquitoes”.
While pyrethroids should remain the standard treatment for nets, as they are the only class of insecticides that can be safely dispersed into the air as a repellent vapor, resistance to pyrethroids must be combated through the combination of other repellent agents.
The team is currently focusing on the wild areas of southern Tanzania, looking for malaria-carrying mosquitoes that have escaped the pressure of insecticides…