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Environmental management of mosquito resources is a promising approach with which to control malaria, but it has seen little application in Africa for more than half a century. Here we present a kinetic model of mosquito foraging for aquatic habitats and vertebrate hosts that allows estimation of malaria transmission intensity by defining the availability of these resources as the rate at which individual mosquitoes encounter and use them. The model captures historically observed responses of malaria transmission to environmental change, highlights important gaps in current understanding of vector ecology, and suggests convenient solutions. Resource availability is an intuitive concept that provides an adaptable framework for models of mosquito population dynamics, gene flow, and pathogen transmission that can be conveniently parameterized with direct field measurements. Furthermore, the model presented predicts that drastic reductions of malaria transmission are possible with environmental management and elucidates an ecologic basis for previous successes of integrated malaria control in Africa before the advent of DDT or chloroquine. Environmental management for malaria control requires specialist skills that are currently lacking in sub-Saharan Africa where they are needed most. Infrastructure and human capacity building in clinical, public health, and environmental disciplines should therefore be prioritized so that growing financial support for tackling malaria can be translated into truly integrated control programs.
Received September 11, 2003. Accepted for publication February 6, 2004.
Acknowledgments: We thank B. Singer, J. Utzinger, M. Tanner, T. Smith and two anonymous referees for their comments on the manuscript, and M. C. Castro and Y. Yamagata for providing additional references and valuable discussions.
Financial support: This work was supported by the Swiss Tropical Institute and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (grant number 23750).
Authors’ addresses: Gerry F. Killeen, Ifakara Health Research and Development Centre, PO Box 53, Ifakara, Kilombero District, Tanzania and Department of Public Health and Epidemiology, Swiss Tropical Institute, Basel, CH-4002, Switzerland, Telephone: 255-748-477-118, Fax: 255-23-262-5312, E-mail: gkilleen{at}ifakara.mimcom.net. Aklilu Seyoum, Institute of Pathobiology, Addis Ababa University, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Bart G. J. Knols, Entomology Unit, Food and Agriculture Organization/International Atomic Energy Agency, Agriculture and Biotechnology Laboratory, A-2444 Seibersdorf, Austria.
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