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- March 3, 2022 at 8:52 am #5345
 Wulan
 Keymaster
- July 24, 2022 at 9:46 am #5963
 Leo Braack
 Keymaster
 Origin of the name “Anopheles culicifacies”
 
 Interesting little snippet published in “Emerging Infectious Diseases” this week, in which they relate the story of how culicifacies got its name:
 
 Etymologia: Anopheles culicifacies
 
 Gaurav Kumar
 
 Author affiliation: National Institute of Malaria Research, Delhi, India
 
 Cite This Article
 
 Anopheles culicifacies [′ə′ nɒfɨliːz′ kyü-lə cifā-sh(ē-)ēz]
 
 In 1901, George Michael James Giles, a lieutenant-colonel and physician in the Indian Medical Service, described Anopheles culicifacies, which he collected from his guest house in Hoshangabad, India (Figure 1). This mosquito mimicked Culex spp. in facial appearance and resting posture (body angled to the surface they are resting on), prompting Giles to name it Anopheles culicifacies because of its culex (culici)‒like appearance (facies) (Figure 2).
 
 An. culicifacies is the principle vector of malaria in India, contributing to >60% of malaria cases in this country annually. Therefore, ≈80% of the budget for malaria control in India is spent on control of this mosquito. Adults can be identified based on characteristic wing morphology (dark third vein) and palpi ornamentation (apical pale band is nearly equal to the pre-apical dark band).
 - This reply was modified 1 year, 7 months ago by Leo Braack.
- August 23, 2022 at 2:12 am #6308
 Wulan
 Keymaster
 Fighting the ‘Million-Murdering’ Mosquito: Lessons from the Pandemic
 
 AUGUST 18, 2022
 
 MICHAEL B. MACDONALD
 
 On August 20, 1897, Ronald Ross made his momentous discovery. The British medical officer in India, Ross found the malaria parasite in the “dapple-winged” mosquito. He marked the scientific breakthrough by penning these lines:
 
 O million-murdering Death; I know this little thing; A myriad men will save.
 
 Little thing, indeed.
 
 As I wrote 5 years ago in GHN for World Mosquito Day, Sir Ronald’s discovery changed the world, breaking from the past “bad air” theories of malaria transmission and bringing us a new paradigm that has saved many millions over the decades.
 
 Sadly, 5 years on, gains in global malaria control efforts have stalled. After significant progress in lives saved since the start of the millennium—made possible with increased funding to expand access to insecticide treated nets, indoor residual spraying, new diagnostics, and treatments—we are at a crossroads and no longer on track to meet our malaria elimination goals. There are several contributing reasons, including large populations displaced by conflict and severe weather, insecticide and drug resistance, and competing priorities with COVID-19 and Ebola. Part of the problem may also be us and our pre-pandemic systems.
 
 Arundhati Roy published “The Pandemic Is a Portal” in the Financial Times on April 3, 2020, writing:
 
 Historically, pandemics have forced humans to break with the past and imagine their world anew. This one is no different. It is a portal, a gateway between one world and the next. We can choose to walk through it, dragging the carcasses of our prejudice… our data banks and dead ideas. Or we can walk through lightly, with little luggage, ready to imagine another world. And ready to fight for it.
 
 The accelerated pandemic response these past 2.5 years with new diagnostics, vaccines, and therapeutics, as well as the intense health care system response, carry lessons for global malaria efforts. The public sector commitment to work in partnership with the private sector to develop these technologies and expedite their review and deployment stands in stark contrast to the way we approach “the other emergency” of malaria.
 
 We old malariologists often hold the commercial sector at arm’s length, as “vendors” rather than “partners,” competing in massive global tenders for the lowest possible unit cost. With insecticide treated nets, this cost drive to the bottom stifles innovation for durability and quality improvement, user acceptability, and incorporation of new chemistries to combat insecticide resistance.
 
 The approval process for malaria products is still numbingly slow, years for innovations that may have already been approved for safety and efficacy by stringent regulatory authorities such as the US EPA. There are often demands for prohibitively expensive randomized control trials (RCTs) with epidemiological endpoints. While RCTs are the “gold standard” for therapeutics and vaccines, they may be inappropriate—and at times unethical—in context-specific environmentally driven processes like malaria transmission.
 
 We can learn from the water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) sector, which is moving away from RCTs for WASH project evaluation into “transformative WASH,” beginning with human-centered design, stakeholder alignment, tailored evaluation designs, iterative program learning and scale-up, and the discovery not just what works, but why things work.
 
 The other lesson of the past 2 years was our over-reliance on top-down “solution-implementation” rather than a bottom-up “problem-solving” capacity. As the attention of donors, ministries, and implementing partners was diverted to pandemic response, some, but not all, malaria programs foundered. Thankfully, there is interest by WHO to “Rethink Malaria” that includes capacity-building and decentralized decision-making at the subnational level. There are also initiatives for “new routes to market” for community access to lifesaving commodities that are not wholly dependent on government deployment systems.
 
 The pandemic is a portal. I hope that on tomorrow’s “World Mosquito Day 2022” marking the day in 1897 we broke from the “bad air” theories, we heed Arundhati Roy, break from the past, learn the lessons from COVID-19, change our systems, and imagine a new path towards a malaria-free world.
 
 Michael B. Macdonald, ScD, is a public health entomologist in Catonsville, Maryland.
- August 27, 2022 at 2:30 pm #6408
 Leo Braack
 Keymaster
 Not quite malaria, but still mosquito-borne…
 
 There is an interesting article on chikungunya recently published, that I enjoyed reading, and explains the rise and spread and epidemiology of chikungunya well. Quite a bit on timelines and spread of the virus in Asia as well. The article is:
 
 Hakim MS, Annisa L, Gazali FM, Aman AT. The origin and continuing adaptive evolution of chikungunya virus. Archives of Virology. 2022 Aug 20:1-3.
 
 and the Abstract is as follows:
 
 Chikungunya virus (CHIKV) is the responsible agent of chikungunya fever, a debilitating arthritic disease in humans. CHIKV is endemic in Africa and Asia, although transmission cycles are considerably different on these continents. Before 2004, CHIKV had received little attention, since it was only known to cause localised outbreaks in a limited region with no fatalities. However, the recent global reemergence of CHIKV has caused serious global health problems and shown its potential to become a significant viral threat in the future. Unexpectedly, the reemergence is more rapid and is geographically more extensive, especially due to increased intensity of global travel systems or failure to contain mosquito populations. Another important factor is the successful adaptation of CHIKV to a new vector, the Aedes albopictus mosquito. Ae. albopictus survives in both temperate and tropical climates, thus facilitating CHIKV expansion to non-endemic regions. The continuous spread and transmission of CHIKV pose challenges for the development of effective vaccines and specific antiviral therapies. In this review, we discuss the biology and origin of CHIKV in Africa as well as its subsequent expansion to other parts of the world. We also review the transmission cycle of CHIKV and its continuing adaptation to its mosquito vectors and vertebrate hosts. More-complete understanding of the continuous evolution of CHIKV may help in predicting the emergence of CHIKV strains with possibly greater transmission efficiency in the future.
- September 1, 2022 at 11:48 am #6432
 Leo Braack
 Keymaster
 Here is a useful quote I came across earlier today: “…a 1921 appraisal of mosquitoes by English physician and writer Havelock Ellis asks us, “If you would see all of Nature gathered up at one point, in all her loveliness, and her skill, and her deadliness, and her sex, where would you find a more exquisite symbol than the mosquito?”
- November 22, 2022 at 2:44 pm #6910
 Leo Braack
 Keymaster
 I came across this fascinating article recently: Sugiarto SR, Baird JK, Singh B, Elyazar I, Davis TM. The history and current epidemiology of malaria in Kalimantan, Indonesia. Malaria Journal. 2022 Dec;21(1):1-6. Here is a part of the Abstract: “In the present review, the history of malaria and its current epidemiology in Kalimantan are examined, including control and eradication efforts over the past two centuries, mosquito vector prevalence, anti-malarial use and parasite resistance, and the available data from case reports of knowlesi malaria and the presence of conditions which would support transmission of this zoonotic infection.” It is a wonderful read, highly enjoyable!
- March 7, 2023 at 2:02 am #6298
 Michael Macdonald
 Participant
 <h1 class=”page-title” style=”box-sizing: inherit; font-size: 2.625rem; margin: 0px 0px 1.875rem; font-family: ‘Quadon ExtraBold’, tahoma, sans-serif; font-weight: normal; line-height: 1; width: auto; color: #000000;”>Fighting the ‘Million-Murdering’ Mosquito: Lessons from the Pandemic</h1>
 <div class=”article-date” style=”box-sizing: inherit; font-family: ‘Gentona Medium’, tahoma, sans-serif; text-transform: uppercase; font-size: 1rem; margin-bottom: 2.5rem; color: #000000;”>AUGUST 18, 2022</div>
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 <div class=”field-title” style=”box-sizing: inherit; font-family: ‘Gentona Medium’, tahoma, sans-serif; font-size: 1rem; text-transform: uppercase;”>MICHAEL B. MACDONALD</div>
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 On August 20, 1897, Ronald Ross made his momentous discovery. The British medical officer in India, Ross found the malaria parasite in the “dapple-winged” mosquito. He marked the scientific breakthrough by penning these lines:
 O million-murdering Death; I know this little thing; A myriad men will save.
 Little thing, indeed.
 As I wrote 5 years ago in GHN for World Mosquito Day, Sir Ronald’s discovery changed the world, breaking from the past “bad air” theories of malaria transmission and bringing us a new paradigm that has saved many millions over the decades.
 Sadly, 5 years on, gains in global malaria control efforts have stalled. After significant progress in lives saved since the start of the millennium—made possible with increased funding to expand access to insecticide treated nets, indoor residual spraying, new diagnostics, and treatments—we are at a crossroads and no longer on track to meet our malaria elimination goals. There are several contributing reasons, including large populations displaced by conflict and severe weather, insecticide and drug resistance, and competing priorities with COVID-19 and Ebola. Part of the problem may also be us and our pre-pandemic systems.
 Arundhati Roy published “The Pandemic Is a Portal” in the Financial Times on April 3, 2020, writing:
 Historically, pandemics have forced humans to break with the past and imagine their world anew. This one is no different. It is a portal, a gateway between one world and the next. We can choose to walk through it, dragging the carcasses of our prejudice… our data banks and dead ideas. Or we can walk through lightly, with little luggage, ready to imagine another world. And ready to fight for it.
 The accelerated pandemic response these past 2.5 years with new diagnostics, vaccines, and therapeutics, as well as the intense health care system response, carry lessons for global malaria efforts. The public sector commitment to work in partnership with the private sector to develop these technologies and expedite their review and deployment stands in stark contrast to the way we approach “the other emergency” of malaria.
 We old malariologists often hold the commercial sector at arm’s length, as “vendors” rather than “partners,” competing in massive global tenders for the lowest possible unit cost. With insecticide treated nets, this cost drive to the bottom stifles innovation for durability and quality improvement, user acceptability, and incorporation of new chemistries to combat insecticide resistance.
 The approval process for malaria products is still numbingly slow, years for innovations that may have already been approved for safety and efficacy by stringent regulatory authorities such as the US EPA. There are often demands for prohibitively expensive randomized control trials (RCTs) with epidemiological endpoints. While RCTs are the “gold standard” for therapeutics and vaccines, they may be inappropriate—and at times unethical—in context-specific environmentally driven processes like malaria transmission.
 We can learn from the water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) sector, which is moving away from RCTs for WASH project evaluation into “transformative WASH,” beginning with human-centered design, stakeholder alignment, tailored evaluation designs, iterative program learning and scale-up, and the discovery not just what works, but why things work.
 The other lesson of the past 2 years was our over-reliance on top-down “solution-implementation” rather than a bottom-up “problem-solving” capacity. As the attention of donors, ministries, and implementing partners was diverted to pandemic response, some, but not all, malaria programs foundered. Thankfully, there is interest by WHO to “Rethink Malaria” that includes capacity-building and decentralized decision-making at the subnational level. There are also initiatives for “new routes to market” for community access to lifesaving commodities that are not wholly dependent on government deployment systems.
 The pandemic is a portal. I hope that on tomorrow’s “World Mosquito Day 2022” marking the day in 1897 we broke from the “bad air” theories, we heed Arundhati Roy, break from the past, learn the lessons from COVID-19, change our systems, and imagine a new path towards a malaria-free world.
 
 Michael B. Macdonald, ScD, is a public health entomologist in Catonsville, Maryland.
 
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- March 9, 2023 at 6:23 am #8850
 Wulan
 Keymaster
 APMEN and Malaria Consortium wrote a piece of work on Community Engagement for vector-borne disease control in Asia Pacific. Community engagement is core to any public health intervention. It is a process in which community groups, organisations and individuals come together to build a dynamic relationship with a collective vision for development and growth of the community. It is rooted in principles involving equity and empowerment, tailored and context-specific solutions, and practices comprising of communication, capacity strengthening and politically and culturally oriented activities. The goal is to engage and enable the communities to assume responsibility of factors influencing their surroundings and to improve their health, to promote equitable access to health services and ensure communities can engage in improving the quality of their health services. The document aims to describe tools and approaches of community engagement for vector-borne disease control by highlighting the experiences, historical lessons, opportunities and examples of country programmes and the projects of Partner Institutions. Read here: https://apmen.org/resources/community-engagement-vector-borne-disease-control-asia-pacific-tools-approaches-and
- September 23, 2023 at 3:44 am #21401
 Leo Braack
 Keymaster
 Hi everyone. In an article published earlier this year: Topazian, Hillary M., et al. “Modelling the relative cost-effectiveness of the RTS, S/AS01 malaria vaccine compared to investment in vector control or chemoprophylaxis.” Vaccine 41.20 (2023): 3215-3223 the authors state that WHO recommends the vaccine to be administered as a four-dose intervention in children in settings of moderate to high malaria transmission. This has to be contextualized in the reality that funding for malaria control is inadequate, with a current USD2,6 billion gap between what is available and what is needed. How do you therefore use the available funds in the most cost-effective way. The answer varies according to whether there is insecticide resistance in target areas, and you need to read the article to understand all these exceptions, but the general, overall conclusion is that ITN’s are still the most effective method for malaria control. In their words, “Vaccination may offer a route to fill a gap in settings where either ITN use is low but routine immunization programs are strong, or where ITNs are not replaced sufficiently frequently, where not enough ITNs are distributed, or where certain ITN types are not effective due to insecticide-resistance”.
- September 23, 2023 at 3:44 am #21402
 Leo Braack
 Keymaster
 Hi everyone. In an article published earlier this year: Topazian, Hillary M., et al. “Modelling the relative cost-effectiveness of the RTS, S/AS01 malaria vaccine compared to investment in vector control or chemoprophylaxis.” Vaccine 41.20 (2023): 3215-3223 the authors state that WHO recommends the vaccine to be administered as a four-dose intervention in children in settings of moderate to high malaria transmission. This has to be contextualized in the reality that funding for malaria control is inadequate, with a current USD2,6 billion gap between what is available and what is needed. How do you therefore use the available funds in the most cost-effective way. The answer varies according to whether there is insecticide resistance in target areas, and you need to read the article to understand all these exceptions, but the general, overall conclusion is that ITN’s are still the most effective method for malaria control. In their words, “Vaccination may offer a route to fill a gap in settings where either ITN use is low but routine immunization programs are strong, or where ITNs are not replaced sufficiently frequently, where not enough ITNs are distributed, or where certain ITN types are not effective due to insecticide-resistance”.
- October 4, 2023 at 1:56 am #22874
 Leo Braack
 Keymaster
 DENGUE: WHO Strategic Advisory Group and QDENGA vaccine
 
 Not quite malaria, but we are the “Vector Control” group and presumably our interests stretch beyond malaria. Here is some interesting news about the latest dengue vaccine:
 
 The World Health Organization’s (WHO) Strategic Advisory Group of Experts (SAGE) on Immunization provided recommendations for use of Takeda’s QDENGA, (Dengue Tetravalent Vaccine [Live, Attenuated]) (TAK-003) today (3rd October 2023 I think)
 
 These include:
 1. Consideration for introduction in settings with high dengue disease burden and high transmission intensity to maximize the public health impact and minimize any potential risk in seronegative persons.
 2. Introduction to children aged six to 16 years of age. Within this age range, the vaccine should be introduced about 1-2 years prior to the age-specific peak incidence of dengue-related hospitalizations. The vaccine should be administered in a 2-dose schedule with a 3-month interval between doses.
 3. Introduction should be accompanied by a well-designed communication strategy and community engagement.
- October 4, 2023 at 1:56 am #22875
 Leo Braack
 Keymaster
 DENGUE: WHO Strategic Advisory Group and QDENGA vaccine
 
 Not quite malaria, but we are the “Vector Control” group and presumably our interests stretch beyond malaria. Here is some interesting news about the latest dengue vaccine:
 
 The World Health Organization’s (WHO) Strategic Advisory Group of Experts (SAGE) on Immunization provided recommendations for use of Takeda’s QDENGA, (Dengue Tetravalent Vaccine [Live, Attenuated]) (TAK-003) today (3rd October 2023 I think)
 
 These include:
 1. Consideration for introduction in settings with high dengue disease burden and high transmission intensity to maximize the public health impact and minimize any potential risk in seronegative persons.
 2. Introduction to children aged six to 16 years of age. Within this age range, the vaccine should be introduced about 1-2 years prior to the age-specific peak incidence of dengue-related hospitalizations. The vaccine should be administered in a 2-dose schedule with a 3-month interval between doses.
 3. Introduction should be accompanied by a well-designed communication strategy and community engagement.
- February 12, 2024 at 9:37 am #38360
 Leo Braack
 Participant
 Time to drop the term ‘simian malaria parasites’
 
 Author links open overlay panel,
 
 The authors say that the term ‘simian malaria parasites’ has crept into the modern malaria literature as a synonym for ‘non-human primate malaria parasites’, most commonly referring to species of Plasmodium infective to Old World monkeys. As humans are also simians, they contend that this usage is erroneous, and should not be used. They have a point…always better to be precise.
- February 12, 2024 at 9:40 am #38361
 Leo Braack
 Participant
 Sorry, the above extract regarding “Simian malaria parasites” comes from the latest Trends in Parasitology, Volume 40, Issue 2, February 2024, Pages 100-101
- April 2, 2024 at 9:01 am #38572
 Wulan
 Keymaster
 The APMEN Vector Control Working Group hosted a webinar last month on the topic of new developments in Indoor Residual Spraying (IRS). We had three international experts on the subject to give presentations covering various aspects of IRS. These were:
 1. Dr Iñigo Garmendia – Development of new tools to enable more efficient IRS interventions
 2. Dr Muhammad Mukhtar – The role of IRS in Pakistan, in particular during humanitarian crises
 3. Dr Manuel Lluberas – The Business Architecture of Indoor Residual Spraying: Sorting out operational details
 Insecticide-Treated Nets (ITN’s) and Indoor Residual Spraying (IRS) are the two preferred vector control tools advocated by the World Health Organization for combatting malaria. Globally, ITN’s are by far the favoured intervention, due to cost and labour factors, but IRS still accounts for an estimated 13% of malaria cases averted in Africa where transmission is most intense, according to a 2015 publication by Bhatt et al (1). IRS involves applying residual insecticide to potential vector resting sites on the interior surfaces of human dwellings or other buildings. IRS is also a better option in particular situations for instance during humanitarian crisis.
 
 IRS has been used globally and became one of the preferred vector control methods in some countries. However, due to a higher procurement and operational cost, IRS is not the most preferred method that donors would support. IRS is useful to control not only malaria vector but also mosquito arbovirus vectors, triatomine bugs, and sand flies. This method is considered as one of the best interventions that could bring down malaria case-load quickly as it rapidly reduces adult vector density and longevity for diseases vectors, and does not rely on human behaviour (such as whether to actually use a bednet or not). Quality assurance is needed for IRS operation to reach the most effective and sustainable effects to control the vectors. The IRS quality assurance must address the basic principles such as uniformity, regularity, and completeness. Uniformity means that all surfaces must have consistent application of the required dose of insecticide. Regularity involves repeated implementation of spraying at a regular interval, depending on the local contexts and the length of the transmission period. While completeness indicates all structures should be sprayed thoroughly, including all difficult-to-reach surfaces inside the houses.
 
 To maximize the IRS operation quality checks on spraying tools and operators are needed. Some factors affecting spraying quality need to be considered, such as quality of the spraying tools, insecticide resistance status, spraying operators, and spraying techniques. To get high-quality of spraying tools that eases the job of operators, some public health and chemical companies developed new tools to enable more efficient IRS interventions. Some innovative approaches such as using mobile and electronic devices have been made available to guide spray operators to spray at the correct distance (for good surface coverage) and speed (for effective spray delivery rate…not too much, not too little) during the IRS operations. The Goizper group developed an electronic device making use of laser technology to measure spraying distance from nozzle to the wall, fluid sensor to measure spraying time of each operator per day and estimate insecticide volume applied by each operator, and mobile application to connect and report the result of spraying quality to supervisors for evaluation purposes.
 
 During humanitarian disasters, IRS is sometimes considered to be the best option for vector control, said Pakistan’s Director of Malaria Control, Dr Muhammad Mukhtar. LLINs deployment was done in the area where almost 30 million people live in temporary shelters during the 2022 flood crisis in Pakistan. However, LLINs could not be used due to space constraints and the inability of hanging the nets in some structures in temporary shelters. It was also reported that many LLINs were damaged, misused, or lost. To bring the malaria caseload reduced, IRS was promoted and implemented in the shelter buildings (schools, hospitals, etc), temporary animal sheds, and tents. This effort brought a significant decline in adult mosquito populations and malaria cases.
 
 It is important to develop a comprehensive and tailored IRS operational plan in a country. In his presentation, Manuel Lluberas (Mosquito Den LLC), emphasized that IRS should consider some components:
 - Component 1: Needs Assessment & Design, including training materials, logistic and operational arrangements, etc.
 - Component 2: Pre-season, including supervisors recruitment and training, preparation of operators, and logistics, etc.
 - Component 3: Campaign design, including stakeholder engagements and consultations, Training of Trainers on spraying use, handling and care, etc.
 - Component 4: Staging & Pre-positioning, including spray team recruitment and training, community notification, organise field teams, etc.
 - Component 5: Mobilization, including community engagement, IRS implementation, documentation, monitoring and evaluation.
 - Component 6: Campaign Closure (demobilize, recover, and evaluate), including review and evaluation, post campaign communications, etc.
 The full recording of the webinar is available at https://orene.org/tech_talks/new-developments-in-indoor-residual-spraying/
 
 Useful references:
 1. Bhatt, Samir, et al. “The effect of malaria control on Plasmodium falciparum in Africa between 2000 and 2015.” Nature 526.7572 (2015): 207-211.
 2. Operational manual on indoor residual spraying: control of vectors of malaria, Aedes-borne diseases, Chagas disease, leishmaniases and lymphatic filariasis. Geneva: World Health Organization; 2023.
 3. Pakistan’s lessons learned on climate change, malaria, and vector-borne disease transmission. https://s3.amazonaws.com/media.unfoundation.org/2023/08/Malaria-Control-Pakistan-Case-Study.pdf
- April 17, 2024 at 5:23 am #38598
 Leo Braack
 Participant
 Some good information to have: Do you know who was the first person to see malaria parasites and understand that they caused malaria? Here is an interesting article that tells us about that story:
 
 Drouin, Emmanuel, Patrick Hautecoeur, and Miles Markus. “Who was the first to visualize the malaria parasite?.” Parasites & Vectors 17.1 (2024): 1-4.
 
 Here is the Abstract for the article: Human malaria, an ancient tropical disease, is caused by infection with protozoan parasites belonging to the genus Plasmodium and is transmitted by female mosquitoes of the genus Anopheles. Our understanding of human malaria parasites began officially in 1880 with their discovery in the blood of malaria patients by Charles Louis Alphonse Lavéran (1845–1922), a French army officer working in Algeria. A claim for priority was made by Philipp Friedrich Hermann Klencke (1813–1881) in 1843, who wrote a chapter entitled: “Marvellous parallelism between the manifestations of vertigo and the presence of animalcule vacuoles in living blood.” We should not lose sight of this old controversy, which is rarely mentioned in historical reviews on malaria.
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