Impact and Cost-Effectiveness of Long-Lasting Microbial Larvicides in Reducing Malaria Transmission and Clinical Malaria Incidence: a Cluster-Randomized Controlled Trial in Western Kenya

In the past decade, massive scale-up of insecticide-treated nets (ITNs) and indoor residual spraying (IRS), together with the use of artemisinin combination treatments, have led to major changes in malaria epidemiology and vector biology. Along with the significant reduction in overall malaria prevalence and incidence, extensive use of insecticides has created large selection pressures for resistance in the malaria vector populations and for potential outdoor transmission, which appears to be limiting the success of ITNs and IRS. Because IRS and ITN have little impact on outdoor resting and early biting vectors, outdoor transmission represents one of the most important challenges in malaria control. Therefore, new interventions that can augment the current public health measures to reduce outdoor transmission are urgently needed. Larval control has historically been very successful and is widely used for mosquito control in many parts of the world, except in Africa. Factors limiting the use of larvicides include high costs associated with frequent habitat re-treatment. Now a new US EPA-approved long-lasting formulation, potentially effective for 6 months is available. The central objective of this study is to determine the effect of long-lasting microbial larviciding on the incidence of clinical malaria and reduction of transmission intensity. Our hypothesis is that addition of long-lasting microbial larviciding to ongoing ITN and IRS programs will lead to significant reductions in both indoor and outdoor malaria transmission and malaria incidence.