$10.2 million grant investigates malaria-prevention strategy

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation awarded researchers at Penn State University and partners in Europe and Africa with a $10.2 million grant to study a novel malaria-prevention method that limits mosquito access to houses, according to a press release.

The researchers will install “eave tubes” that hold insecticide-laced netting (In2Care) inside gaps between roofs and walls of houses in Tanzania and Cote d’Ivoire to kill mosquitoes that attempt to enter the homes. To enhance their efforts, the researchers will insert tubes that funnel human odor to attract the insects, the release said.

Figure 1. A house in Tanzania is fitted with eave tubes to prevent malaria-carrying mosquitoes from entering.

Source: In2Care

“The use of insecticides to control mosquitoes has saved millions of lives, but this tactic is increasingly challenged because mosquitoes quickly evolve resistance to the very limited number of insecticides currently used in public health, “Matthews Thomas, PhD, professor and Huck Scholar in ecological entomology at Penn State University, said in the release. “The eave tube approach presents a novel strategy to help combat this challenge by simultaneously making houses more mosquito proof and providing a novel way of delivering insecticides, which creates opportunities for using a wider range of insecticidal products.

“The small amount of insecticide used in the tubes means that it is cheap to treat an entire house.”

Investigators already have installed eave tubes in more than 1,800 houses in Tanzania through a $5.6 million grant from the European Union, the release said. They estimated the tubes reduced up to 90% of indoor mosquito densities.

With the newest grant, Thomas and colleagues will install the eave tubes in nearly 6,000 more houses in Tanzania and assess trapped mosquitoes for insecticide resistance. They also will perform socioeconomic analyses to identify homeowners who are willing to participate in the project and develop strategies to implement the tubes across various regions.

“There has been a marked reduction in malaria burden in many parts of the world over the last 15 years,” Thomas said. “Keeping this momentum going requires new tools than can be put into place in the short term to help deal with the problem of insecticide resistance. This is what eave tubes offer.”

Disclosure: Infectious Disease News was unable to confirm relevant financial disclosures at the time of publication.