Malaria is a tropical disease spread by mosquitoes (as vectors) that still kills more than half a million people every year.
ITM is part of the interdisciplinary CEASE project, led by the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine (LSTM), which aspires to map the spread of the malaria mosquito vector Anopheles stephensi in Ethiopia and Sudan. The social science work package, led by ITM researchers, aims to understand how social and ecological factors affect the spread of the mosquito in this region. They will also model the public health impact and the cost-effectiveness of different emerging vector control strategies. Besides LSTM and ITM, the collaboration brings together experts from the Jimma University and Armauer Hansen Research Institute (Ethiopia), the University of Khartoum (Sudan), Imperial College London and Lancaster University (UK). The project is funded by the Wellcome Trust.
The SWARM study, financed by the International Human Frontier Science Program, researches how malaria mosquitoes swarm and mate. The project combines expertise from neuroscience, engineering/machine vision, behavioural ecology and medical entomology, from laboratories across three continents. Researchers aim to provide crucial knowledge about the mechanisms that underlie the vast reproduction of malaria vectors and hereby support the development of malaria vector control strategies, such as gene-drive, acoustic lures, and monitoring. The study is being conducted with partners from the University of Washington (USA) and the Institut de Recherce en Sciences de la Santé, Centre Muraz (Burkina Faso).
