Malaria Must Go!
By Katie Taylor and Andrew Stordy
Catching the Right Solution
Katie Taylor and Andrew Stordy are recent graduates of the industrial design engineering course at the Royal College of Art in London. Andrew Stordy has trained and worked as a mechanical engineer, while Katie Taylor has a background in manufacturing engineering.
The Malaria Must Go project bolsters the fight against malaria with a multi-pronged attack. LINDA, a baited mosquito killer, attracts mosquitoes using carbon dioxide and human foot odor. A modified kerosene lamps produces vaporized oil, such as lemon-eucalyptus, to repel mosquitoes. When combined with existing interventions, such as long-life insecticide-treated bed nets, they increase the level of protection against malaria.
An Everyday Solution
The Malaria Must Go designs are inexpensive, easy-to-use, effective weapons in the fight against malaria. LINDA is used outside the home to attract mosquitoes away from where people are sleeping. It only needs to be lit once at the beginning of the night to provide protection for the community well into the small hours. The modified lamps are for use inside the home. They contain a well where oils, such as lemon-eucalyptus, are heated and released as vapor into the air repelling mosquitoes from a dwelling.
Malaria is a disease transmitted to people through the bites of mosquitoes, which carry the plasmodium parasite. If not treated promptly with effective medicines, malaria can cause a severe illness that is often fatal. According to the World Health Organization, approximately 40 percent of the world’s population, mostly those living in the poorest countries, is affected by malaria. Every year, more than 500 million people become severely ill with malaria, and one child dies every 30 seconds from its effects.
Malaria also has a socioeconomic impact, which the WHO estimates to cause an average loss in annual economic growth of 1.3 percent in countries with intense transmission. Malaria traps families and communities in a downward spiral of poverty, disproportionately affecting marginalized populations and the poor who cannot afford treatment or who have limited access to healthcare.
Grassroots Design
The Malaria Must Go project is the result of a collaboration between ourselves and experts at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM). We were fortunate enough to tap into LSHTM’s expertise in London as well as to travel to Tanzania to see the research it does in the field. The research trip was an inspiring experience that allowed us to better understand the problem from the perspective of the different stakeholders: the local people, bed-net manufactures and NGOs such as the LSHTM.
We adopted a user-centered design approach, observing people’s attitudes and opinions while simultaneously generating ideas. During our research, we felt it essential to maintain contact with our expert collaborators and the people we met in Tanzania. To this aim, we set up a web site with a secure forum where we could post our ideas and get feedback. We also conducted a second trip to Africa, this time to Burundi to conduct tests and get further feedback from users.
Throughout the design process, we were conscious of the wider socio-economic impact our device might have in a developing country. Since to a great extent malaria is linked to poverty, we aimed to create a product that could be made in the local community, creating jobs for some of those affected by the disease. The output of Malaria Must Go achieves this on two different levels. Our bated mosquito killer LINDA would be bought by aid agencies and manufactured as a product-line extension for a factory located near the end users. Our modified kerosene burning lamps would be manufactured by local artisans and hopefully adopted by the community as an improvement over current lamps. The use of lemon eucalyptus oil in the lamps also has the potential to create a new industry.
An Everyday Solution
LINDA works by attracting mosquitoes with carbon dioxide and the smell produced by Bacterium linens, a type of bacteria that lives on human feet. Carbon dioxide is produced by burning charcoal at a controlled rate that roughly matches the carbon dioxide exhaled by a human. It proved challenging to create a system that would reliably burn the charcoal at a slow enough rate (8g/hr) without going out. The charcoal also needs to be burned with an adequate supply of air to ensure that carbon dioxide is produced as opposed to carbon monoxide, which is poisonous and does not attract mosquitoes. The final design relies of a hopper system that feeds a charcoal stick into an air stream where it burns slowly. Mosquitoes are killed when, attracted by the odours, they land on the netting on the outside of the device. The netting is the same fabric as is used in bed-nets and is impregnated with an insecticide which kills the mosquitoes as soon as they land.
Producing the smell of human feet was also a challenge. Our experiments included breeding bacteria on cheese. (Washed rind cheeses, such as Limburger, contain the same bacteria that breed on feet.) Our final solution, however, simply uses socks, which are naturally cultured with bacteria through everyday wearing. With further research we believe it could be possible to develop a replaceable attractor that emits the same chemical footprint as Bacterium linens.
Our modified kerosene-burning lamps were developed in Burundi with a local tinsmith. The biggest problem we encountered was how to convey our ideas. It was difficult to communicate through a translator, and we discovered that drawings are in fact an abstract form of communication. The most effective method turned out to be card models that could be disassembled and copied by the tinsmith.
Tinsmith in Kyanza Burundi
Lab experiments with live mosquitoes were conducted at the LSHTM to test the viability of our method of insect attraction and destruction. These primary tests proved encouraging, with the device attracting and killing significantly higher numbers of mosquitoes than in control situations when the device was not turned on. However, more testing will have to be done before LINDA’s effectiveness can be validated.
A Bright Future
The solutions we developed were generated by completely immersing ourselves in the problem at hand. It was only through our trip to an affected region of the world and our collaboration with LSHTM that we were able to fully grasp the situation. By understanding the different aspects of malaria, the issues surrounding treatment and all the different stakeholders, we were able to develop a practical device that complements devices already in use and that is accessible to affected populations, increasing the current level of protection from malaria.
LINDA and the modified lamps have the potential to have an enormous impact on the communities that use themt. Reducing the number of mosquitoes is proven to reduce the incidence of malaria, and specifically reducing the number of female mosquitoes, as our device does, is an even more effective way to reduce malaria rates as females are the carriers of the disease. Communities with effective malaria control measures in place have more people able to work at any one time, more children who survive to adulthood and less need to spend money on expensive medicines.
LINDA is an initial prototype, with further development required in terms of refining the technology and the route to market, be it through NGOs and charities or governments. Currently, we are looking for an opportunity to develop further LINDA and to do additional testing to take LINDA to the people who really need it.
LINDA
Modified versions of locally produced kerosene lamps
© Katie Taylor and Andrew Stordy | Malaria Must Go!