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  • Going beyond personal protection against mosquito bites to eliminate malaria transmission: population suppression of malaria vectors that exploit both human and animal blood

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Going beyond personal protection against mosquito bites to eliminate malaria transmission: population suppression of malaria vectors that exploit both human and animal blood
  1. Gerry F Killeen1,2,
  2. Samson S Kiware1,
  3. Fredros O Okumu1,3,
  4. Marianne E Sinka4,
  5. Catherine L Moyes5,
  6. N Claire Massey4,
  7. Peter W Gething5,
  8. John M Marshall6,
  9. Carlos J Chaccour7,8,
  10. Lucy S Tusting5
  1. 1Environmental Health and Ecological Sciences Department, Ifakara Health Institute, Dar es Salaam, United Republic of Tanzania
  2. 2Department of Vector Biology, Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, Liverpool, UK
  3. 3School of Public Health, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa
  4. 4Department of Zoology, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK
  5. 5Oxford Big Data Institute, Li Ka Shing Centre for Health Information and Discovery, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK
  6. 6Divisions of Biostatistics and Epidemiology, School of Public Health, University of California, Berkeley, California, USA
  7. 7Instituto de Salud Global, Barcelona Centre for International Health Research (CRESIB), Hospital Clínic, Universitat de Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain
  8. 8Instituto de Salud Tropical, Universidad de Navarra, Pamplona, Spain
  1. Correspondence to Gerry Killeen; Gerry.Killeen{at}lstmed.ac.uk

Abstract

Protecting individuals and households against mosquito bites with long-lasting insecticidal nets (LLINs) or indoor residual spraying (IRS) can suppress entire populations of unusually efficient malaria vector species that predominantly feed indoors on humans. Mosquitoes which usually feed on animals are less reliant on human blood, so they are far less vulnerable to population suppression effects of such human-targeted insecticidal measures. Fortunately, the dozens of mosquito species which primarily feed on animals are also relatively inefficient vectors of malaria, so personal protection against mosquito bites may be sufficient to eliminate transmission. However, a handful of mosquito species are particularly problematic vectors of residual malaria transmission, because they feed readily on both humans and animals. These unusual vectors feed often enough on humans to be potent malaria vectors, but also often enough on animals to evade population control with LLINs, IRS or any other insecticidal personal protection measure targeted only to humans. Anopheles arabiensis and A. coluzzii in Africa, A. darlingi in South America and A. farauti in Oceania, as well as A. culicifacies species E, A. fluviatilis species S, A. lesteri and A. minimus in Asia, all feed readily on either humans or animals and collectively mediate residual malaria transmission across most of the tropics. Eliminating malaria transmission by vectors exhibiting such dual host preferences will require aggressive mosquito population abatement, rather than just personal protection of humans. Population suppression of even these particularly troublesome vectors is achievable with a variety of existing vector control technologies that remain underdeveloped or underexploited.

This is an Open Access article distributed in accordance with the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt and build upon this work, for commercial use, provided the original work is properly cited. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjgh-2016-000198

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    Footnotes

    • Handling editor Seye Abimbola.

    • Contributors GFK conceived and acts as guarantor for the study. GFK drafted the manuscript in consultation with the other authors, all of whom contributed substantively to the logic, interpretation and presentation of the content. Figure 1 and 2 were prepared by GFK and Figure 3 was prepared by CLM and MES. All authors critically reviewed and approved the manuscript.

    • Funding Financial support for this study was kindly provided by the European Union through the Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007–2013 Grant agreement 265660), the Parker Foundation through a gift to the Global Health Group Malaria Elimination Initiative at the University of California at San Francisco, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (Award numbers OPP1068048, OPP1106023, OPP1132415) and the Wellcome Trust (Award number 108440/Z/15/Z). Individual authors were also supported by the following personal awards: A Wellcome Trust Research Training Fellowship (SSK: Award number 107599/Z/15/Z), a Wellcome Trust Intermediate Research Fellowship (FOO: Award number 102350/Z/13/Z), a Ramón Areces Foundation Fellowship (CJC), a Skills Development Fellowship (LST: Award number N011570) and Career Development Fellowship (PWG: Award number K00669X), both jointly funded by the UK Medical Research Council and the UK Department for International Development, and in the case of PWG, also part of the EDCTP2 programme supported by the European Union.

    • Competing interests None declared.

    • Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.

    • Data sharing statement No additional data are available.

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