Wheldrake, A., Guillemois, E., Arouni, H. et al. (3 more authors) (2024) Physical durability: are bed nets getting any stronger? Malaria Journal, 23 (1). 19. ISSN 1475-2875
Abstract
Background
For at least a decade, concerns have been raised about the physical durability of insecticide-treated nets (ITNs) and their ability to remain in good condition for at least three years. To discover if the resistance to damage (RD) of ITNs has improved or not, the RD scores of ITNs sampled in 2013 and 2020 were compared.
Methods
The RD scores and disaggregated textile performance data for nine ITNs recommended by the WHO pesticide evaluation scheme (WHOPES) measured in 2013 were compared with WHO-prequalified ITNs sampled in 2020. This included assessment of newer ITNs not available in 2013, to determine the extent to which product development has led to performance improvements across all available ITNs in the intervening years.
Results
The resistance to damage of ITNs has not generally improved from 2013 to 2020, and in some cases performance is worse. The average RD score of comparable ITNs brands decreased from 40 in 2013 to 36 in 2020. Of the nets available in 2020, only two of the twenty-four ITN products tested achieved an RD score of > 50, while six ITNs had very low RD scores of < 30, highlighting a serious inherent, and literal weakness in many WHO-prequalified ITNs.
Conclusions
The long-term physical durability of ITN products cannot be expected to improve while their resistance to damage remains so low, and major upgrades to the performance standards of textile materials used to make ITNs, as well as incentives to develop stronger ones are urgently required.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © The Author(s) 2024. Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativeco mmons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data. |
Keywords: | Long-lasting insecticidal mosquito nets; Resistance to damage; Physical integrity; Durability |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Leeds |
Academic Units: | The University of Leeds > Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Cultures (Leeds) > School of Design (Leeds) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Publications |
Date Deposited: | 23 Feb 2024 14:10 |
Last Modified: | 23 Feb 2024 14:10 |
Published Version: | https://malariajournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/... |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Springer |
Identification Number: | 10.1186/s12936-023-04832-8 |
Related URLs: | |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:209525 |
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