Uganda: WHO Expert Warns Against Misuse of Mosquito Nets amid New Scientific Discoveries
By Staff Writer
Distribution of mosquito nets in Uganda will not eliminate malaria if beneficiaries fail to properly use them, the World Health Organization (WHO) country representative has said during a visit to Rhino Refugee Camp in Ocea County, West Nile.
“If the target population does not use the nets properly, we shall not meet our goal of eliminating malaria,” Dr Wondimagegnehu Alemu said at the weekend as he distributed nets in the camp.
The 2014/15 national Budget prioritizes the implementation of the malaria strategy for effective control through mass distribution of long lasting insecticide treated nets and mass indoor residual spraying in high malaria prone areas of Lake Kyoga and northern Uganda.
While reading the Budget in Kampala last week, Finance minister Maria Kiwanuka highlighted the need to provide sufficient funds to the Ministry of Health, to fund the programme.
“A section of men in some parts of Koboko are not sleeping under the nets because of cultural beliefs. Some say the chemicals in the nets can suffocate them,” said Mr Idrinsi Deo, the district health educator.
However, he was quick to note that people are massively being sensitized on how to use nets.
Dr Alemu said the costly nets cannot work in isolation but with other prevention mechanisms including bush cutting and elimination of places that harbour stagnant water.
In Britain June 2014, Biologists said they had devised a new weapon against malaria by genetically engineering mosquitoes which produce mostly male offspring, eventually leading to a population wipe-out.
The sex selection technique produces a generation of mosquitoes which is 95-percent male, as opposed to 50 percent in normal populations, they reported in the journal Nature Communications.
"We think our innovative approach is a huge step forward. For the very first time, we have been able to inhibit the production of female offspring in the laboratory, and this provides a new means to eliminate the disease."
The result of six years' work, the method focuses on Anopheles gambiae mosquitoes, the most dangerous transmitters of the malaria parasite.
"Malaria is debilitating and often fatal and we need to find new ways of tackling it," said study leader Andrea Crisanti, a professor at Imperial College London.
"The research is still in its early days, but I am really hopeful that this new approach could ultimately lead to a cheap and effective way to eliminate malaria from entire regions," said Crisanti's colleague, Roberto Galizi.
In an independent comment, University of Oxford specialist Michael Bonsall said the research was "super cool work."
"This has important implications for limiting the spread of malaria," he told Britain's Science Media Centre. "It will be very exciting to see how this specific technology is now taken forward."
Scientists are already experimenting in the wild with Aedes aegypti mosquitoes -- which carry dengue fever -- that have been modified to create offspring that do not reach adulthood.
They survive for just a week, compared to a month for normal mosquitoes.
Brazil and Malaysia have already released batches of these insects, and Panama in January said it would follow suit.
The programmes have run into concerns from environmentalists, who point to unknown impacts of GM releases on biodiversity balance.
If one mosquito species is eliminated in a neighbourhood, this opens up opportunities for a rival, and potentially dangerous, species to move in, they say.
Africa is hoping to benefit most from these new discoveries as it is a hot spot for malaria epidemics which is a lethal killer mostly among children under the age of 5years.
Malaria kills more than 600,000 people each year, with young children in sub-Saharan Africa on the frontline, according to the UN's World Health Organization (WHO).