Soaking fabrics in a commonly used insect repellent is a simple and effective tool as mosquito bites become more common during daytime, study shows
From Africa to Latin America to Asia, babies have been carried in cloth wraps on their mothers’ backs for centuries. Now, the practice of generations of women could become a lifesaving tool in the fight against malaria.
Researchers in Uganda have found that treating wraps with the insect repellent permethrin cut rates of malaria in the infants carried in them by two-thirds.
Malaria kills more than 600,000 people a year, most of whom are children in Africa under five years old.
The trial involved 400 mothers and babies aged about six months old, in Kasese, a rural, mountainous part of western Uganda. Half were given wraps, known locally as lesus, treated with permethrin and half used standard, untreated wraps that had been dipped in water as a “sham” repellent.
