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CLAIMS OF ITN MISUSE

Saturday, 17th of September 2011

• CLAIMS OF ITN MISUSE

Claims about the Misuse of Insecticide-Treated Mosquito Nets: Are These Evidence-Based?

Thomas Eisele and colleagues dispute reports in the media and elsewhere that insecticide-treated nets are not widely used, or are misused, and say that such misconceptions are not evidence-based and are damaging to malaria control efforts.

Full text is at http://www.plosmedicine.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pmed.1001019

Thomas P. Eisele1*, Julie Thwing2, Joseph Keating1

1 Department of International Health and Development, Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine, New Orleans, Louisiana, United States of America, 2 Malaria Branch, Center for Global Health, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Atlanta, Georgia, United States of America

Citation: Eisele TP, Thwing J, Keating J (2011) Claims about the Misuse of Insecticide-Treated Mosquito Nets: Are These Evidence-Based? PLoS Med 8(4): e1001019. doi:10.1371/journal.pmed.1001019

Published: April 12, 2011

This is an open-access article, free of all copyright, and may be freely reproduced, distributed, transmitted, modified, built upon, or otherwise used by anyone for any lawful purpose. The work is made available under the Creative Commons CC0 public domain dedication.

Funding: No specific funding was received to write this Essay.

Competing interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Abbreviations: ITN, insecticide-treated mosquito net

* E-mail: teisele@tulane.edu

Provenance: Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.

Summary Points

There are a number of potentially damaging misconceptions about insecticide-treated mosquito nets (ITNs) in Africa that have been propagated in media reports, almost all of which are based on anecdotal accounts.

While it is clear there is room for improving the level of ITN use among those who have them, and that misuse of nets occasionally occurs, we found very little evidence to support claims of widespread misuse across Africa.

We identified only one peer-reviewed study that reported misuse of ITNs; this study was a non-probability survey of seven beaches on Lake Victoria in western Kenya, making the conclusions non-generalizable.

Inaccurate news stories of widespread ITN misuse should be rebuked directly through the dissemination of empirical data contradicting anecdotal reports and in rebuttal editorials in newspapers and journals.