Cloth wraps treated with ‘dirt cheap’ insecticide cut malaria cases in babies | Global health

From Africa to Latin America to Asia, babies have been carried on their mothers’ backs in fabric wraps for centuries. Now this practice of generations of women could become a life-saving tool in the fight against malaria.

Researchers in Uganda discovered that the dressings were treated with the insect repellent permethrin. reducing malaria rates two-thirds of babies carried inside them.

Malaria Kills more than 600,000 people a yearMost of them are children under the age of five in Africa.

The trial was attended by 400 mothers and babies aged approximately six months in Kasese, a rural and mountainous region of Western Uganda. Half of them were given locally known packaging. lesushalf-used standard, untreated dressings treated with permethrin and soaked in water as a “fake” repellent.

To see which babies developed malaria, researchers followed them for six months and re-treated the dressings once a month.

Babies carried with treated dressings were two-thirds less likely to contract malaria. In this group, 0.73 cases per 100 babies were seen each week, while in the other group, 2.14 cases were seen.

A mother attending a community session about the trial results stood up and told the gathering: “I’ve had five children. This is the first child I’ve ever carried in a treated wrap, and the first time I’ve had a child without malaria.”

Co-lead researcher Edgar Mugema Mulogo, a professor of public health at Mbarara University of Science and Technology in Uganda, said everyone was “extremely excited” by the results.

“We suspected there would be a potential benefit; what was most notable was its size.”

Co-principal investigator Dr. D., a professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Ross Boyce was so surprised that he said they had to run it again to double-check the results. “I wasn’t sure it was going to work, to be honest,” Boyce said. “But that’s why we’re doing studies.”

Mosquitoes that carry malaria parasites typically feed at night, so mosquito nets have historically been crucial in combating the disease.

But they it bites more and more outside that time framein the evening or early morning, a time when adaptation to mosquito nets may be possible.

“We need to find a solution that allows us to prevent bites before bedtime, when you’re outside — especially in a rural community where the kitchens are outside, they’re probably eating dinner outside — that are also likely to transmit malaria,” Mulogo said.

She said shawls are ubiquitous in these communities and are used not only to carry babies but also as shawls, sheets and aprons. He would like to see processed dressings become part of the toolkit used to combat malaria in Uganda. He said there is already demand in the communities participating in the study.

Health officials in Uganda and international malaria leaders at the World Health Organization have expressed interest in the research. It may help babies, as the protection transferred through the mother’s antibodies often wanes before vaccination.

This is also being built on previous research Similar success has been achieved with shawl treatments in Afghan refugee camps. WHO guidelines already recognize the role that permethrin-treated clothing can play as individual protection against malaria.

Mulogo is hopeful that local production of impregnated packaging will one day be possible. “It offers a very good business opportunity for the local industry.”

The researchers said there are a number of steps that need to be taken before making any use of the intervention, including evidence that it works in other settings.

Boyce said the insecticide has a good safety profile and has been applied to textiles for years, including by the U.S. military, who first came across the idea while serving in Iraq.

Infants carried in permethrin-treated coils were slightly more likely to develop a rash (8.5% versus 6%), but none caused enough trouble to warrant their withdrawal from the study. Boyce and Mulogo say more research will be needed to confirm the safety of the intervention, but the potential risks outweigh the benefits.

Boyce wants to see whether treating school uniforms could also lower malaria rates. But he said there was no money “in bank accounts yet” for subsequent research stages.

He is hopeful that the simplicity of the intervention will attract the interest of funders. “My mom understands what we’re doing. It’s not a specific fusion protein inhibitor or anything like that. We took a piece of cloth and wet it. And it’s very cheap,” he said.