Why I study the most dangerous animal on earth -- mosquitoes

As a mosquito researcher, this book is inspiring for many reasons, the greatest of which is the magnitude of the gains that the team in Brazil accrued in just two years after the Malaria Service of the North East began its heavy attack on Anopheles larvae and adults. It should be noted that these accomplishments occurred at a time when health system structure was at infancy in the area, the number of tools available for control was limited — and so was the available expertise. Moreover, most malaria experts of the day did not think the strategy adopted by the Brazil team would succeed. Another important lesson from this book is that the team relied on accurate assessments of the biology of the mosquitoes, and effectively went after it with absolute focus. If this could be done in Brazil in 1930s, we should be confident that local elimination of certain vector species by 2030 is an achievable target in several parts of Africa. At the end of this book, the writers described several opportunities for doing deploying similar approaches in Africa, which we can learn from. Unfortunately for me, this is a book I should have read many years ago.

I read this book in 2016, when many people still thought Zika virus was headed towards some kind of an apocalypse. For me, this was very highly readable and equally rewarding both academically and story-wise. In this book, I discovered many things, including the work of a close scientist I know very well, Dr. Brian Foy, and his wife, who had described Zika infection from West Africa, a few years earlier. At the peak of the recent Zika epidemic, and at this stage, my colleagues Peter Sangoro and Tegemeo Gavana had just completed initial proof-of-principle around the idea that mosquito-repellent sandals can protect people from mosquitoes that transmit multiple diseases including Zika, malaria, Chikungunya and dengue.

It’s a coincidence that I read this book in 2017, at a time when there was so much talk about new tools for mosquito control, among them the potential applications of genetically modified mosquitoes. As a public health researcher based in Africa, I found the messages in this book timely and highly educative. One of the points raised by Juma is what happens when there is distrust between developers and the public regarding the new technologies — but also why "developing" countries sometimes choose to take precautionary approaches, with protracted approval procedures. In the end, Prof. Juma encourages political leaders, scientists, technology developers and entrepreneurs to engage proactively so that genuinely effective and desirable technologies are midwifed and brought to the forefront. This is an approach that the public health community will need to take, in order to revolutionize mosquito control.