“`html
Kasese, Uganda – A practice as old as motherhood itself-carrying babies in cloth wraps-could be a game-changer in the fight against malaria, according to new research.Treating these wraps with the common insecticide permethrin slashed malaria rates in infants by a remarkable two-thirds.
A Simple Solution to a Deadly Threat
A low-cost intervention could significantly reduce malaria cases in vulnerable infants.
- Malaria kills over 600,000 people annually, with children under five in Africa disproportionately affected.
- Treating infant wraps with permethrin reduced malaria cases by 66 percent in a Ugandan trial.
- The intervention is inexpensive, readily available, and builds on existing practices.
- Researchers are exploring expanding the treatment to school uniforms and other textiles.
Can a simple cloth wrap really protect babies from malaria? Yes. A recent study found that treating wraps used to carry infants with permethrin cut malaria rates by two-thirds.
Malaria claims more than 600,000 lives each year, with the vast majority of fatalities occurring in African children under the age of five. The trial,conducted in the rural,mountainous region of Kasese,Uganda,involved 400 mothers and their approximately six-month-old babies.Half received lesus-the local name for wraps-treated with permethrin, while the other half used standard wraps dipped in water as a control.
For six months, researchers monitored the infants for malaria, re-treating the permethrin-treated wraps monthly. The results were striking: babies carried in the treated wraps experienced 0.73 cases of malaria per 100 infants each week, compared to 2.14 cases per 100 in the control group.
“I’ve had five children. This is the first one that I’ve carried in a treated wrap, and it’s the first time I’ve had a child who has not had malaria,” shared one mother during a community session discussing the trial’s findings.
Co-lead investigator Edgar Mugema Mulogo,a professor of public health at Mbarara University of Science and Technology in uganda,described the results as “tremendously exciting.” He added,”We suspected that there would be potential benefit – what was quite outstanding was the magnitude.”
Dr. Ross Boyce, also a co-lead investigator and a professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, was so surprised by the findings that he initially suggested repeating the study to verify the results. “I wasn’t sure it was going to work, to be honest with you,” boyce admitted. “But that’s why we do studies.”
This shift in mosquito behavior underscores the need for broader preventative strategies. Mulogo explained, “Before you go to bed, when you’re outdoors – particularly in the rural community, where the kitchens are outside, probably they have the evening meal outside – we also need to find a solution ensuring
