Fatal disease malaria can now be controlled with housing improvements

Scientists have claimed that housing improvements in certain settings can help eradicate malaria.

Mosquitoes have become resistant to insecticides and malaria parasites resistant to drugs. Hence, in a research conducted by the London School of Hygiene, researchers looked at how making changes to houses might contribute to tackling the deadly disease.

The study found that residents of modern homes were 47 per cent less likely to be infected with malaria than those living in traditional houses, and residents were 45-65 per cent less likely to have clinical malaria.

Malaria is a life-threatening disease caused by parasites that are transmitted to people through the bites of infected mosquitoes that causes more than half a million deaths per year.

Author Lucy Tusting said that housing improvements were traditionally an important pillar of public health but they remain underexploited in malaria control. Good housing can block mosquitoes from entering homes and prevent them from transmitting malaria to the people who live there.

Co-author Steve Lindsay said that improved housing has huge potential to reduce malaria transmission around the globe and to keep malaria at bay where they have eliminated it.

He added that since many of the world's major vector borne diseases are transmitted indoors, improved housing is likely to be protective against diseases like dengue, leishmaniasis, Chagas disease and lymphatic filariasis.

Through the study, authors have claimed that the consistency of the findings indicate that housing is an important risk factor for malaria.

The research is published in open-access Malaria Journal.