MIT, Environmental Engineering, Boston, MA 02115
One of the major problems facing Malaria intervention today is sustainability. Many of the popular ways of dealing with the disease, such as insecticide spraying and bed nets, rely heavily on outside funding, and carry the risk of mosquito resistance. The use of neem as an insecticide offers a mechanism by which villagers can take malaria control into their own hands, and removes much of the risk associated with other interventions. The research we conducted in Niger, involved using the seeds of the neem fruit, grinding it into a powder, and applying the powder to the ephemeral pools of water. The powder was effective in killing the mosquito larvae. Also, because the seeds contain over 99 active chemicals, resistance seems unlikely. We measured our effectiveness by comparing mosquito catches in the experimental village to those of a control village, and to the mosquito catches of previous years. The village, in which neem intervention was conducted, showed a significantly smaller number of mosquitoes than the control. Also, the data demonstrated greater efficacy than the bed net program that was implemented several years earlier. The results indicate that neem is in fact a sustainable, and effective mechanism by which to eliminate the malaria vector on a local scale. The widespread implementation of neem intervention will allow villagers to be become self-reliant and eliminate much of the need for outside funding or donations.
[Abstract (DOC)]