Last Updated: 11/11/2020
Star home better health through better housing. Phase II house evaluation
Objectives
This study will assess whether mosquito entry is similar in:
1) Houses with light-permeable walls compared with houses with light-impermeable walls
2) Light and air-permeable walled houses with narrow eaves gaps compared with those with closed eaves
The pilot study will be done at the Mosquito-City (Ifakara semi-field system) located at Kiningina village. Four large semi-field chambers will be used for this study, whereby two SFS-chambers will be comprised of transparent-walled huts and two with opaque-walled huts. The study will take a total of 64 nights of experimentation; 32 nights for the light experiments and another 32 nights for the eave-gapes experiments.
The primary outcome measures of the study will be the number of mosquitoes collected inside the two sets of houses. The secondary outcome measure will be the microclimatic conditions of the huts.
Poor housing is a major challenge in Africa, especially in rural sub-Sahara countries where approximately >60% of people are living in houses with open eave-spaces, unscreened windows, and doors. Poor-housing is associated with increased malaria, diarrhea, and malnutrition. The behavior of people cooking inside their houses poses a challenge of poor ventilation which led to respiratory tract infection especially for the children. All the diseases and health problems associated with poor housing raises the possibility that novel designs of houses could help reduce the burden of these diseases and improve the nutritional status of young children.
From July 2014 to July 2015, a pilot study in Magoda, Tanga region was carried out to assess whether new prototype healthy homes could reduce malaria transmission, keep the house cool, and prove acceptable to the local population. Six different prototypes of healthy homes were constructed, including one single-story and one double-story building each made from bamboo, shade net, or timber cladding. The prototype houses were designed to reduce malaria by screening to keep out mosquitoes and keep the house cool as well as allow proper bed net use so as to increase overall communal bed net use. There was a 95% reduction in mosquito house entry in double-story buildings and a 70% reduction in screened single-story buildings compared with the unmodified reference houses. Both single and two-story buildings were 2.3°C (95% CI 2·2–2·4) cooler than traditional housing.
May 2020 — Mar 2021
$15,000
