Malaria & architecture 3

I attach photos of similar houses to those shown in the previous post.

As you can see in the first photo the houses are very similar to those posted before. These houses are very "porous" in terms of letting mosquitoes (and other bugs) in, and the chance of geting inhabitants to modify them in any way is probably very slim.

But if you look inside you will see extensive use of textiles in the houses (second photo). If we can get all these textiles treated with an insecticide in some way then this will go a long way towards mosquito control. This would have to be done cheaply and with as little hassle as possible (the inhabitants cannot be expected to pay for or do it themselves - these are the now almost famous less than US$ 1 per day people).

The third photo shows IRS being done in one of these houses, with a curtain seperating the sleeping area from the rest of the house. This curtain could also be treated. This leads onto another topic - that of the sheer volume of "stuff" in these rural houses (see second photo) which creates a problem for proper application of IRS - perhaps someone else would like to address this issue. Certainly in the past people in these settings had less possessions, which made IRS easier.

I also think we should be emphasizing the potential of these interventions (mosquito nets and other treated fabrics as well as IRS) to control other pests (ants, flies,bedbugs etc.), as a way to get better buy-in from the inhabitants.

In my experience use of bednets in these settings is hot and uncomfortable, and I can imagine the use of treated plastic sheeting would create the same problem. Therefore we should work with what is already there.