Chicken Odour Prevents Malaria - New Research Shows
Health
Scientists from Ethiopia and Sweden have discovered that malaria-causing mosquitoes tend to evade chickens and other birds.
The experiments were carried out in Ethiopia where a live chicken in a cage was suspended near a volunteer sleeping under a bed net.
The researchers realized that using the chicken and the compounds reduced the number of mosquitoes found in the trap nearby.
According to the UN, in Africa alone, malaria killed nearly 400,000 people.
The malaria parasite which are of the genus Plasmodium, and initially hides in the liver before going into the bloodstream, is passed from person to person by mosquitoes when they drink blood. With the research published in The Malaria Journal, the scientists concluded that as mosquitoes use their sense of smell to locate an animal, they cannot bite chicken and some birds because there must be something in a chicken’s odour that sets the insects off.
Habtie Tekie of Addis Ababa University who worked on the research, said that the compounds that repel the mosquitoes from the smell of the chicken can be extracted and could be used as a repellent. Field trials for this stage of the research are now in the pipeline, he told the BBC. With reports that some mosquitoes are developing resistance to insecticide “new control methods” need to be developed and embraced.
