Mosquito net manufacturers to supply re-treatment kits

Tanzania's insecticide-treated net (ITN) manufacturers will soon begin to prepackage and sell their products with an extra mosquito insecticide kit to boost their effectiveness in malaria prevention, health officials have announced. Jane Miller of Population Services International (PSI), a health organisation, which is part of a new, US $12 million five-year programme aimed at fighting malaria in Tanzania, told IRIN on Monday that the agreement between the country's ITN manufacturers - Sunflag, A-Z Textile Mills and Textile Manufacturers of Tanzania Limited - to "pre-bundle" the mosquito nets with extra insecticide would enable consumers to treat their nets repeatedly to render them more effective in combating mosquitoes. A treated net is 50 percent more effective than an untreated net, according to health experts. Currently priced at 400 Tanzanian shillings (40 US cents) a dose, the insecticide kits are still a major expense for very poor Tanzanians, according to Miller. She said PSI had ensured that the net manufacturers would get the insecticide at the wholesale price of 15 US cents, thereby raising the price of each net by only that amount. The net manufacturers "realised that they weren't likely to lose out from a small price rise if everybody did it", Miller added. Independent specialists concur that the agreement - the first of its kind in the world - was likely to have a major impact on the re-treatment rates of ITNs, greatly improving their effectiveness. "This is a good idea. What we have found in all our research that has been done is that re-treatment rates are generally fairly low, but they improve when these nets are pre-bundled," Don de Savigny, research manager at the Tanzanian Essential Health Intervention Project, told IRIN on Monday. Studies across Africa have revealed that malaria cases among children who sleep under nets are reduced by half, and that an ITN doubles that degree of protection. However, this year's Household Budget Survey concluded that while 80 percent of households in Tanzania's commercial capital, Dar es Salaam, had ITNs, the figure for the rural areas was a meagre 28 percent. "If all of us are going to honour this [agreement], I can see a major advantage of using this treatment kit. We have decided to bundle, because the price of the kit is much less than it used to be, but I think we'll see the real benefits of this once people realise the real advantage of treated nets," Shah Anuj, the managing director of A-Z Textiles, told IRIN. The agreement is part of a wider programme - funded by the UK's Department for International Development (DfID) and the Dutch Embassy - which aims to use the private sector to penetrate the rural areas through rotating markets, existing distribution systems and corporate links with companies such as Coca Cola, British Petroleum and the mobile phone network, Celtel. "When we set about meeting the Abuja declaration that 65 percent of all pregnant mothers and children under five should sleep under an ITN and, at least 50 percent of all nets should be regularly treated, they looked massively ambitious targets. But when we look at the progress that has been made, and this new initiative, I think we will hit the 50 percent target easily," Paul Smithson, DfID's health and population adviser in Tanzania, said. Ultimately, however, health experts expect that the time will soon come when people will no longer have to re-treat their nets regularly. "This is an important transition as we move from untreated nets to bundled nets [and then] to permanently treated nets. Hopefully, within a year, people will not have to worry about treating nets. It's a hassle - not a big one, but still a hassle. It is human nature being what it is, and you've got to be pretty motivated to go and do it. That's the weak link in this very powerful intervention," de Savigny concluded.