Cow-Baited Tents as a Monitoring and Intervention Tool

Brandyce St. Laurent of the National Institutes of Health in the U.S. will test whether cow-baited tents can be used to monitor and control disease-causing mosquitoes in the Greater Mekong Subregion. Most Anopheles mosquitoes preferentially bite animals, but they still contribute to malaria transmission in humans, and many bite outdoors, rendering bednets and indoor repellants useless against them. They will produce low-cost tents treated with insecticide, and locally rent cows as bait. The tents will be set up in both villages and forests and the captured mosquitoes will be analyzed to evaluate the efficacy of their approach.