Last Updated: 17/09/2024
Human Decoy Trap; operational and social acceptability of novel tool to improve surveillance and control of mosquitoes and other disease vectors
Objectives
The objectives of this project are:
- To test the “Human Decoy” Trap against current methods used in mosquito monitoring to determine whether the Human Decoy Trap can overcome the limitations of existing tools;
- To evaluate if Human Decoy Trap catches are suitably similar to those of current outdoor traps in terms of numbers of mosquitoes and other important data related to malaria that can be extracted from mosquitoes caught by traps, such as the proportion of caught mosquitoes infected with malaria parasites; and
- To work with end-users of the trap, namely local communities, public health operatives and field technicians, to better understand their perspectives and needs regarding mosquito sampling and control.
Natural Resources Institute (NRI), University of Greenwich, United Kingdom
The malaria parasite is spread by infected mosquitoes and the most effective way to monitor the disease is to monitor populations of these mosquitoes. However, current tools for sampling malarial mosquitoes are time-consuming and labour intensive, making them expensive and difficult to standardize. To solve this problem, a mosquito trap that exploits the blood-seeking behaviour of mosquitoes by mimicking the sensory stimuli that a mosquito follows when searching for a person to bite has been developed. These include the look, smell and temperature of warm-blooded hosts. These stimuli have been incorporated into a trap that lures mosquitoes towards it and then captures them when they land.
Longer-term, a version of the Human Decoy Trap can be deployed as a mosquito control tool. The most effective way of controlling malaria is to reduce the number of infective mosquito bites a person receives. This is currently achieved by providing people with insecticide-treated bed nets to protect them from bites whilst they sleep and spraying the walls inside houses thus killing mosquitoes that rest there. However, neither of these options protects people from mosquitoes that may bite them outdoors during the day or just before they go to bed at night. Data from this current project will be used to provide preliminary evidence for the suitability of the Human Decoy Trap as a control tool that is specifically targeted at malaria mosquitoes biting outdoors, which may also be effective against other species of mosquitoes that can carry other infectious diseases, such as dengue fever, chikungunya and Zika viruses. A successful outdoor mosquito control device would help to reduce the population of infected mosquitoes that cause malaria.
Feb 2017 — Jan 2019
$696,161
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