Keeping up with Kitwe

On Friday, the team headed out into the field again-to the rural areas surrounding the city of Kitwe, in the Copper Belt.

This might have been the bumpiest road yet! We ended up at a small village, which served as a control sentinel site for the Copper belt region. We met with Mary, a local Environmental Health Technician, Weston, a Vector Link entomologist, and a representative from the Ministry of Health for the province! They took us through their four main surveillance activities: vector behavior, resistance management and Indoor Residual Spraying quality assurance.

Mary gave us a great demonstration of how to morphologically identify mosquito species. Zack worked through the dichotomous key on a microscope to identify an Anopheles Arabiensis .

At this site, they use Human Landing Catches (HLC) and Pyrethrum Spray Catching (PSC) to surveil mosquitoes. They employ local members of the community to conduct this surveillance. We met up with a group of HLCs and PSCs who graciously demonstrated their work for us!

Human Landing Catchers work from 6pm to 8am four nights a month. They expose their feet and legs to act as “bait” for the mosquitoes. When a mosquito lands on their legs, they use an aspirator to capture the mosquito! Don’t worry-they’re given prophylactics.

Pyrethrum Spray Catchers wake up at 3am on study days to visit local households. They lay white sheets on the ground and spray the walls with insecticide, killing the mosquitoes such that they fall onto the sheets. This gives the indoor resting density.

We topped off the day with a visit to the Tropical Disease Center in Ndola where we explored more labs!