THE US military has been adding insecticide to clothing for years. Now a study of Somalian refugees suggests that a similar technique could be the next best thing to mosquito bed nets when it comes to fighting malaria.
Ninety-seven volunteers at a refugee camp in Kenya had their clothes and bedding washed in the common insecticide permethrin every three weeks, while another group of 101 volunteers had their clothes and bedding washed in water. Both groups were allowed to wash their clothes normally in between.
Washing in insecticide reduced the odds of malarial infection by 70 per cent compared with the controls, and fewer mosquitoes were found in the houses of those with insecticide-treated clothes. No side effects were reported (Malaria Journal, vol 5, p 63).
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鈥淚nsecticide-treated clothes could provide much-needed protection against malaria鈥�
Around 100 million insecticide-treated bed nets have been shipped to areas of Africa where malaria is endemic in recent years. The nets are a very cheap way to tackle the problem, and have been shown to cut the risk of infection in half.
However, only 1 in 10 households have more than one mosquito net, while the average household in Kenya has 4.4 people. Treating clothes with insecticide could therefore provide a much needed extra level of protection against mosquito bites and malaria, says Elizabeth Kimani of the African Population and Health Research Centre in Nairobi, Kenya, who led the research.
The results are impressive, says Desmond Chavasse, global director of malaria control at non-profit organisation Population Services International in Washington DC, but widening this practice to the general population will be difficult at best, he adds. 鈥淚t鈥檚 a question of finding the appropriate niche in public health. In refugee camps you can control what people wear. How you would do that for the general public, I have no idea.鈥�
