A study published in the journal “The Lancet” concluded that bed nets plus a new type of insecticide cut the incidence of malaria in children by nearly half during a large trial conducted in Tanzania, which raises hopes for a new weapon in the fight against the disease that has claimed lives for a long time.
Nets have effectively contributed to the tremendous progress the world has made in fighting malaria in recent decades, saving millions of lives. But progress has stalled in the past few years, partly because of the increasing development of resistance to mosquitoes, which transmit infections to the insecticides used in existing bed nets.
In 2020, 627,000 people died of malaria, most of them children in sub-Saharan Africa.
But this time, researchers from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine in the United Kingdom, the National Institute for Medical Research and Kilimanjaro Christian Medical College in Tanzania and the University of Ottawa in Canada concluded that a new insecticide, the first in 40 years, was safe and effective in a real-time trial. random.
Nets supplemented with chlorfenapir and pyrethroids, the usual chemical, reduced the prevalence of malaria compared to those provided by 43 percent in the first year and 37 percent in the second year of the trial.
The study included more than 39,000 families, and followed more than 4,500 children between the ages of six months and 14 years.
The nets, developed by Yassef in Germany and LSHTM, cost a little more than existing nets, at about $3 each, but the researchers said the benefits of preventing infections outweighed the increased costs.
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