Mosquitoes, sandflies, and other disease-carrying insects are evolving resistance to the insecticides that once controlled them, while rapid urbanisation in Africa is creating new breeding grounds faster than control programmes can adapt. This partnership tackles a specific bottleneck: most disease-endemic countries lack the trained scientists and data to decide which vector control tools—bed nets, indoor spraying, larvicides, or newer approaches—actually work best in their local conditions. The shortage is especially acute for vector biologists, but the problem also demands economists and anthropologists who can assess cost-effectiveness and community acceptance. The project links research institutes and national disease control programmes in Burkina Faso, Cameroon, and Malawi with long-term mentorship from the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine. It will generate evidence on which interventions reduce disease burden most efficiently in twenty-first-century urban environments, and it will strengthen the in-country capacity to make those decisions independently. If successful, ministries of health, planning, and finance will have a stronger evidence base for allocating limited budgets—choosing tools that are not only effective but affordable and acceptable to the communities they serve. This could mean fewer cases of malaria, dengue, and other vector-borne diseases, and faster, more resilient responses when outbreaks occur.
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Vector-borne diseases are pervasive, causing massive morbidity and mortality and severely retarding economic development across the developing world. Many of our current tools are inadequate in twenty first century urban environments or failing due to insecticide resistance, and the evidence base for newer interventions remains weak. Selecting the most cost effective, affordable and acceptable tools to reduce the burden of vector borne disease requires an integrated approach involving vector biologists, economists and anthropologists, working in partnership with national ministries of health, planning and finance. In reality, most disease endemic countries lack the capacity to develop evidence based strategies to control these diseases. There is a particularly acute shortage of vector biologists but also an urgent need to attract leading scientists from other disciplines to tackle this major public health crisis. This proposal will establish a Partnership to Increase the Impact of Vector Control. We will bring together leading research institutes and national disease control programmes from three African countries with exceptionally high burdens of vector borne disease, Burkina Faso, Cameroon and Malawi, to develop evidence based solutions for integrated vector control. Supported by long term mentorship from LSTM and rigorous evaluation of the capacity needs in-country, the Partnership will generate new knowledge and tools, and strengthen national decision-making leading to reduced disease burden and increased resilience for responding to outbreaks.
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