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PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases Issue Image | Vol. 14(10) November 2020

Residual Spraying of Household Boundary Fences: An Innovative approach to Control Visceral Leishmaniasis

East Africa has the world's highest burden of visceral leishmaniasis (VL). In endemic Sudanese villages, people live in grass huts surrounded by tall thatched reed fences for added privacy. Uncomfortably high temperatures during the VL transmission season force residents to sleep outdoors in their household yards, where they are exposed to bites from Phlebotomus orientalis, the highly exophilic/exophagic sand fly vector of VL. Pioneering entomological studies demonstrate that a single application of residual insecticide to boundary fences and hut exterior walls results in an 83-99% reduction in vector numbers over the short sand fly season. Elnaiem, et al. (2020)

Image Credit: Dia Elnaiem

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Residual Spraying of Household Boundary Fences: An Innovative approach to Control Visceral Leishmaniasis

East Africa has the world's highest burden of visceral leishmaniasis (VL). In endemic Sudanese villages, people live in grass huts surrounded by tall thatched reed fences for added privacy. Uncomfortably high temperatures during the VL transmission season force residents to sleep outdoors in their household yards, where they are exposed to bites from Phlebotomus orientalis, the highly exophilic/exophagic sand fly vector of VL. Pioneering entomological studies demonstrate that a single application of residual insecticide to boundary fences and hut exterior walls results in an 83-99% reduction in vector numbers over the short sand fly season. Elnaiem, et al. (2020)

Image Credit: Dia Elnaiem

https://doi.org/10.1371/image.pntd.v14.i10.g001