Bill Gates funded billions to trap malaria mosquitoes

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Grand Challenge Foundation have drawn $ 775 thousand for a malaria mosquito trapping project, based on the idea of ​​a 2006 Nobel Prize (often called IgNobel) of 2006.

This IgNobel prize is a research ' achievement ' in the field of biology. The prize winner is Bart Knols and Ruurd de Jong, professor at Vagenigen Agricultural University (Netherlands) for ' discovering the female anophen mosquito (the culprit that spread malaria, has the scientific name Anopheles gambiae) I like cheese and human feet ' smell .

The richest billionaire in the world will invest nearly $ 1 million in the idea to lure malaria mosquitoes once thought to be "silly".

In January 2010, a group of scientists led by Fredros Okumu, the Ifakare Institute of Medicine, Tanzania published in PLoS ONE an article describing the trap used as a 'bait' to trap her. Malaria mosquitoes are dangerous, but 'bait' is a chemical compound with a human odor to attract her to seek.

Among the substances to create the human odor, the team concocted the human exhaled CO2, ammonia, lactic acid and some other fatty acids found in human sweat. During the experiment, it was found that this 'mosquito bait' was more effective than the sock, which a 26-year-old volunteer had worn for 10 hours.

Okumu himself acknowledged his research stems from the idea of ​​Knols. In 2009, his team built a mosquito trap device with a budget of $ 100,000. They are rotating the next funding for deployment in industrial production.

Mr. Okumu announced the trial of 'bait' in real terms and said the group's mosquito trap has attracted the number of mosquitoes, living in Africa three to five times more than the number of mosquitoes found. to burn people. If the person is applying 'bait', the number of mosquitoes that fly is 2 to 5 times more than that of no priming.

Seeing the mosquito trapping project to kill is promising in the payment of malaria, the annual disease causes a huge number of deaths and very expensive treatment costs, Bill Gates decided to extract charity funds. The Bill & Melinda Foundation supports this project.