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■Introduction and Overview

The seventh section is dedicated to repellents and insecticides from plant extracts or

natural essential oils. Natural products are effective, environmentally friendly, biodegrad-

able, inexpensive, and vastly available and are an alternative to conventional synthetic re-

pellents and insecticides. Many plant-essential-oils extracted from different families can

be applied as green repellents against mosquito vectors, such as citronella, peppermint,

clove, eucalyptus, catnip, immortelle, basil, thyme, lavender, rosemary, and others. These

oils are considered safe by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) at low concentra-

tions but provide a limited duration of protection against mosquitos, less than usually three

hours. Therefore, Essential Oils cannot achieve their full potential because of the chemical

volatility and instability characteristics exposed to environmental factors such as oxygen,

heat, light, and moisture. Microencapsulation has been used as a viable technique to pre-

serve the oils’ essential biological and functional characteristics and achieve the required

full potential. Microencapsulation can prevent the loss of volatile oil compounds while al-

lowing for the controlled and sustained release of essential oils, enhancing bioavailability

and efficacy against pathogens.

The eighth section deals with mosquito repellents applied on cotton fabric to protect

people against Anopheles spp and Aedes aegypti. For this purpose, the bleached cotton

fabric was scoured and treated with natural immortelle essential oil and ingredients, such

as water glass and Vibro-activated zeolites, and analyzed. In general, to apply repellents

on textiles, finishing is necessary. Various attempts have been made to replace environ-

mentally hazardous products and to use new procedures in preparing functional coatings

for medical applications, which allow combining the entrapment of bioactive compounds

with their controlled release. The sol-gel process has demonstrated its exceptional potential

among the different methods proposed. In one of the chapters within this section, the new

trends in textile engineering toward green finishing processes, such as plasma technology,

are discussed. It has been shown that cold plasmas were found suitable for surface modifi-

cation of temperature-sensitive textile materials.

The ninth section evaluates and tests mosquito-repellent-treated textile products. The

use of insecticide or repellent-treated bed nets, head nets, jackets, uniforms, and curtains

is increasing, and objective, standardized testing methods for the efficacy of the products

are crucial. This chapter briefly reviews repellents, treated methods, and several bioassay

methods in the laboratory and field for anti-mosquito textiles and proposes advisable stan-

dard methods.

The tenth and final section discuss specific case studies in two African countries,

namely Republic of Malawi and Republic of Cabo Verde. One chapter focuses on the

Rephaiah project in Malawi. As is well known, if malaria is not treated, it can quickly

become life-threatening, affecting children under five very hard with severe or cerebral

malaria. The Rephaiah project is based on the need for pediatric dosage forms to treat

children under five years with the simple dosage form. This project focuses on provid-

ing health to these children by establishing a not-for-profit pharmaceutical manufacturing

entity in Malawi. The other chapter is about the national program in Cabo Verde combat-

ting mosquito-transmitted VBDs. These control activities as national efforts include using