Mosquito bed nets yield positive results in India
25/06/2008
A trial scheme distributing mosquito bed nets has yielded overwhelmingly positive results in one Indian city, NDTV reports.
Up until about four years ago, the city of Greater Noida, located to the south-east of Delhi, had been one of the area's worst affected by malaria.
Residents frequently required hospitalisation due to the city's heavy monsoon waters, which created an ideal breeding ground for the Anopheles mosquitoes that transmit the disease.
But in 2004, a trial scheme was launched in Khandera - one of the worst-affected villages, where 11 separate infections had been reported in a single year out of a population of just 2000.
Some 1,500 insecticide-treated bed nets were distributed to residents as part of one of the longest-running clinical studies of its kind in India.
And with four years having passed since the trial was initiated, researchers have now confirmed that not one single further case of malaria has taken place in the village.
Hailing the effectiveness of the programme, the team of scientists noted that mosquitoes die within four minutes of coming into contact with the nets when they are brand new.
Even after more than four years of use and having been washed up to 20 times, they still managed to kill the virus within 11 minutes.
Malaria was nearly eradicated in India in the late 1970s but there has been a resurgence of cases across the region since then. Globally, more than one million people are killed by the disease every year.
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