Research: Suppression of malaria transmission and increases in economic productivity in African countries from 2007 to 2011

This article is a book review of 'The encyclopedia of medical and veterinary entomology', which is based on and adapted from the original text 'Medical and Veterinary Entomology'written by Prof. Douglas S. Kettle (the second edition, which was published in 1995). It will be much valued by those needing basic information on arthropods of medical and veterinary importance and thus deserves to be present in your library or on your bookshelf.
The purpose of this survey was to assess peoples’ knowledge and perceptions on malaria among all the 71 households of Tubu village, located on the fringes of the Okavango Delta, in order to generate information to contribute to the malaria elimination programme being implemented by the Ministry of Health of Botswana. Generally, the high level of awareness and good practices shown by the community were ideal for sustainable implementation of community-based malaria intervention programmes. Misconceptions on malaria need to be corrected as these may have some detrimental effects on the Ministry of Health’s goal of malaria elimination in Botswana by 2016.
Malaria transmission was assessed in four villages with different micro-ecological features in the forest zone of the Akwapim-Mampong Range in Ghana. Human landing catches(HLC) of mosquitoes were conducted and Plasmodium falciparum circumsporozoite rates were assessed by ELISA. Sporozoite prevalence, annual biting rates (ABR) and entomological inoculation rates (EIR) from the four study sites were compared with climatological and ecological data. Additionally trends in confirmed clinical malaria incidence from 2005 -2012 were examined. In total 1307 Anopheles gambiae s.l. and 54 An. funestus females were caught by HLC from November 2003 to August 2005. Sporozoites rates ranged from 4.0 to 10.2%, ABR from 371 to 1890 and EIR from 40 to 158. The ABR significantly influenced the parasite density (PD) of P. falciparum. Malaria transmission was intense and heterogeneous and corresponded to the micro-ecological differences. Malaria transmission in the early evening hours before people went to sleep was enough to sustain stable malaria. Scaling up preventive measures to reduce exposure to vectors will be effective in reducing parasitemia in children. Variations in transmission intensity must be considered when evaluating impact of control strategies and interventions such as the vaccine trials.