The National Malaria Elimination Program (NMEP) in collaboration with the Noguchi Memorial Institute for Medical Research and the Ketu North Municipal Health Directorate is undertaking a mosquito Entomological Surveillance in Ehiega and Torgbeve communities. The three months exercise which commenced in May 2024 will end in July 2024. As part of the procedure, trained volunteers will work four days in their respective communities each month to collect mosquitoes for examination. The objectives for this exercise are to identify the different mosquito species in the area, observe the behavioural pattern of the malaria vector and to determine the extent of insecticide resistance of the malaria vector. In line with the timelines, activities for May were conducted from 23rd to 27th May 2024 in the two communities as elaborated below.
The exercise involves two main methods. These include Human Landing catch which involves physically catching mosquitoes with the hand by volunteers and Pyrethroid Spray Catch which involves the spraying of selected rooms with insecticide and collecting mosquitoes knocked down by the spray. Eight volunteers from each of the selected communities were trained for the exercise. As part of the operations, each community was divided into four Quadrants with 2 houses selected per quadrant (8 houses per community) for the Human Landing Catch (HLC) and 5 rooms selected per quadrant (20 rooms per community) for the Pyrethroid spray catch.
The trained volunteers work in two batches per quadrant in each of the communities using the shift strategy. The first batch of 4 volunteers worked from 6:00Pm – 12:00Am in a quadrant and the second batch of 4 volunteers took over from 12:00Am – 6:00Am in the same quadrant.
In each house, one of the volunteers was stationed inside a room that nobody sleeps in while the other volunteer stayed outside. The two switch positions after every one hour. Their main duty as volunteers in these houses was to catch mosquitoes that attempted to bite them (volunteers) and put them in a tube.
Additionally, 5 rooms that people slept in the previous night in the quadrant where the volunteers worked were sprayed by Pyrethroid insecticide spray and mosquitoes knocked down were collected.
The first month of the exercise ended successfully. Mosquitoes collected were packaged and sent to Noguchi for examination. Data on all mosquitoes collected was entered into the NMEP Event capture dataset in DHIMS-2.