Harvard scientists may soon prevent malaria from spreading

CAPE TOWN - A discovery by scientists at Harvard could soon stop the spread of malaria.  

Researchers at the Ivy League University have found two substances that, when absorbed through the legs of a mosquito, kill the malaria parasite.   

Malaria claims nearly 600,000 lives each year, with the majority of the victims being children. 

Malaria Researcher at the H3D Centre for the University of Cape Town, Dr Dale Taylor, said mosquitoes sometimes become resistant to the current insecticides used to kill them

“So what this drug does, it goes up through the feet, gets into the mosquito’s circulatory system and it can kill the egg before it matures, and the beauty of this, when you’re trying to treat a patient with malaria you're looking at trying to treat a billion parasites the mosquito probably only has two or three eggs so it is a really clever way to really focus and target what you’re trying to do," said Taylor. 

Taylor added that bed nets are not scarce in sub–Saharan Africa

“So in an ideal world we’d be able to use this as a tablet and also in spray form on bed nets, I imagine they would still need to do some testing to see whether or not it will work well enough in a human to become a tablet but certainly the bed net is probably less than five years away from a practical solution.”