Tanzania fights malaria mosquitoes with scent socks
Last reviewed: 23.04.2024
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"Cheapness, accessibility and environmental friendliness" - these are the three qualities that characterize the ideal remedy for combating this or that disease. In three Tanzan villages, scientists experimentally use scented socks to lure malarial mosquitoes into traps, "where they are poisoned and eventually die."
One of the sponsors of the project is the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and the study is conducted by the Tanzan entomologist Fredros Okumu, a doctoral student at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. His experiment - the first field tests of odorous socks. The effectiveness of the method was proved in the laboratory, and it turned out that such a bait attracted mosquitoes even more than living people - "at least until the insects are close enough to understand that there is no blood there."
In addition to socks worn for one day by an adult, and an artificial mixture of substances released by the human body (such as lactic acid, ammonia and propionic acid), the third type of bait will also be tested - wadded disks invested for a day in schoolboy socks. The winner will be determined by the number of caught insects.
The trap is a square box that looks like an industrial hive. Some of them will be lubricated internally with an organophosphate pesticide. The mosquito that sinks on this surface will die within a day. Five times slower than the filling of other traps - a special kind of fungus. For 1000 people, it is planned to set from 20 to 130 traps. The main question that is facing the researchers today is where to place the traps - they should not be too close, but not too far from the living quarters.
Malaria worldwide takes away nearly 900,000 human lives each year, with the majority of the victims being children. The use of traps with bait - a new word in the fight against this disease. Previously, only so-called vector control was practiced - a strategy in which insects were tried to take people away from places of residence or to destroy them in places of natural accumulation. In private, residents of endemic areas acquire hinged nets with repellent impregnation, as well as insecticides, which are applied to the inner surface of the walls.
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