Improving the efficacy of malaria prevention in an insecticide-resistant Africa

Malaria is a parasitic disease transmitted by the bite of a mosquito. Deaths from malaria have halved over the past decade due to extensive financial investment in proven tools that can prevent transmission such as insecticide treated bednets. However, these gains are fragile. More than 600,000 people still die from malaria each year, the majority children in Africa. There are signs that the most effective malaria prevention tools are beginning to fail as mosquitoes develop resistance to the insecticides used on bednets or adapt their behaviour to feed at times when bednets are not in use. It is critical that we understand how these changes are affecting our ability to control malaria so that we can adapt control measures accordingly.

This project involves scientists with expertise in measuring and understanding mosquito and human behaviour, mathematicians who will quantify the impact of these traits on the predicted efficacy of different packages of interventions and economists who will consider the cost of these alternative approaches.

This holistic approach will enable us to propose a pragmatic, affordable solution to ensure that successes in reducing the devastating effects of malaria in Africa are sustained.