Foreword

Prevention is often better than treatment, and this is certainly true for a number of

insect-borne diseases such as malaria, dengue, and visceral leishmaniasis. The push for

malaria elimination over the last decade, with the rapid scale-up of the use of long-lasting

insecticide impregnated bed nets and the increased use of indoor residual spraying, sup-

ported by the US Presidents malaria initiative, combined with better combination anti-

malaria drug treatment and prophylaxis has dramatically reduced infant mortality. The

surprise for many malariologists was the extent to which insect control was responsible

for this reduction, with around 67% of the reduction coming from the two vector con-

trol interventions. It took the availability of large-scale data sets and cutting-edge spatial

and mathematical modelling to demonstrate this. The poorly informed consensus prior to

this work being published was that the gains were driven by access to combination drug

treatment with vector control playing a more minor support role. Key lessons here are

the importance of different disciplines engaging in the development, deployment, and as-

sessment of global infectious disease control efforts and understanding properly what is

working and why.

If we are to fully realize the benefits in global health from vector control, we need

to add to the arsenal of proven technologies and establish exactly how these control tools

can be effectively integrated. For too long the field has been dominated by insect control

specialists often using small-scale field experimental approaches in different formats that

do not have the power to provide a solid evidence base for policy changes at scale. It is

obvious that the field would benefit from a disruptive multi-disciplinary approach to as-

sessing and validating different vector control approaches, building on the strengths that

mathematical and theoretical modelers could bring to the subject.

This book is a welcome start to this journey, bringing together a multidisciplinary team

from many countries to look at a range of well-embedded and more experimental vector

control approaches. Their thought provoking and novel approaches provide an engaging

platform for more traditional vector control specialists at all stages of their career. I am

delighted to see the outputs of this European Union funded collaborative effort in this en-

gaging book format, that is well-targeted for both entomology students and vector control

practitioners and demonstrates to those across a range of other disciplines how they might

engage productively in the debate on how we evolve insect control over the next decades.

Professor Janet Hemingway , CBE, FRS, AcadMedSci, FRCP, NAS USA

October 2022

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