Next-generation bed nets get major endorsement from World Health Organization

A new tool to fight the world’s deadliest animal—the malaria-carrying mosquito—may soon become more widely available. Yesterday, the World Health Organization (WHO) endorsed using a new kind of bed net treated with insecticides. It combines two chemicals to more effectively kill the mosquitoes that transmit the parasite that causes malaria, a disease that killed an estimated 619,000 people in 2022, most of them young children in sub-Saharan Africa. Insecticide-treated bed nets protect people from malaria in two ways. They prevent mosquitoes from reaching the person sleeping under the net, and they kill the mosquitoes that land on them, reducing the overall population of the deadly insects. Widespread use of the nets has been one of the main reasons malaria rates fell by an estimated 40% between 2000 and 2015 . But in recent years, resistance to the main insecticide used to treat nets , pyrethroid, has been spreading. That has contributed to the rebound of malaria in many places. “It’s high time” for the WHO recommendation, says Patrick Kija Tungu, an entomologist at the National Institute for Medical Research in Tanzania. “We need new nets” that don’t rely only on pyrethroid, he says. The new nets endorsed yesterday are treated with pyrethroid and a second chemical called chlorfenapyr. It is a relatively new insecticide that targets mosquitoes’ mitochondria, inducing muscle cramps and preventing the...
Source: ScienceNOW - Category: Science Source Type: news