"From Africa to Latin America to Asia, babies have been carried in cloth wraps on their mothers' backs for centuries. Now, the practice of generations of women could become a lifesaving tool in the fight against malaria. Researchers in Uganda have found that treating wraps with the insect repellent permethrin cut rates of malaria in the infants carried in them by two-thirds."
"The trial involved 400 mothers and babies aged about six months old, in Kasese, a rural, mountainous part of western Uganda. Half were given wraps, known locally as lesus, treated with permethrin and half used standard, untreated wraps that had been dipped in water as a sham repellent. Researchers followed them for six months to see which babies developed malaria, re-treating the wraps once a month. Babies carried in the treated wraps were two-thirds less likely to develop malaria."
Permethrin-treated cloth baby wraps worn on mothers' backs reduced malaria incidence among carried infants by two-thirds in a randomized trial in Kasese, western Uganda. Four hundred mothers and approximately six-month-old infants were randomized to receive lesus treated monthly with permethrin or identical-looking untreated wraps dipped in water. Follow-up lasted six months, with malaria cases monitored weekly; treated-wrap infants experienced 0.73 cases per 100 babies each week versus 2.14 in the control group. Mothers reported notable benefits, and investigators were surprised by the magnitude of protection. The intervention leverages an established childcare practice and could complement nighttime bed nets for malaria control.
Read at www.theguardian.com
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