LONDON (Reuters) – Modernising mud huts and other traditional housing could significantly cut the risk of malaria for people living in some of the highest risk areas of Africa, Asia and South America, according to new research.
Scientists who studied the impact of types of housing on peoples’ risk of infection with the mosquito-borne disease found that residents of modern homes were 47 per cent less likely to be infected than people living in traditional houses.
People in modern houses, equipped with closed eaves, ceilings, screened doors and windows, were also 45 to 65 per cent less likely to have clinical malaria, which brings a high fever with infection, the researchers found.
“Improved housing has huge potential to reduce malaria transmission around the globe and to keep malaria at bay where we have eliminated it,” said Steve Lindsay, a professor from Durham University in northern England who co-led the work.
Lindsay added that since many of the world’s major vector-borne diseases, such as dengue, leishmaniasis, Chagas disease and lymphatic filariasis, are transmitted indoors, more modern and enclosed housing would also offer vital protection against several other dangerous infections.
Malaria kills some 600,000 people a year, according to the World Health Organization, and the vast majority of those deaths are among babies and children in sub-Saharan Africa.
