Over 50,000 locally designed bed nets distributed to the interior providing privacy for families and protection for all children under five against malaria.

Frequent washing poses challenges for insecticide-impregnated malaria bed nets

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There are two types of indigenous people in the interior of Suriname: the Amerindians and descendents from the African slaves who went to live in the interior also. We call these people the Maroons in Suriname. They did not go as deep into the jungle as the Amerindians and they mostly live by rivers. They like to wash their clothes a lot.

Every morning, if you go to the river banks, it is some kind of cultural happening, you see the women washing the dishes washing the plates and washing the clothes in the river. Usually they wash their clothes a lot. They are known to be very clean. But that is not very good for the bed nets because if you wash them too much then it means they will not last as long.

So we are doing campaigns on local radio stations and on television to inform people that they should not wash the nets as often as they would usually wash their clothes. It seems that people are listening and they try to limit the number of washes. The nets that are being used in the communities where the Maroons live, we suspect that after a couple of months we will really need to or replace them or reimpregnate them again by insecticide. Iin fact we already started to do an evaluation on the effect of washing bed nets because we do not know how long lasting the insecticide impregnation is. We need to have exact figures, so right now we are doing a survey in the whole interior on how often people wash their nets and on the insecticide content of the net after a couple of washes.

Secondly, the way the clothes are washed in the interior could have an impact on the efficacy of the bed nets. Generally people do not have washing machines in the interior because there is no electricity and even if there is electricity, it is only in the evening for a couple of hours. So clothes are being soaked in the water along the river and people usually then put the clothes on a rock and beat the clothes with a stick to get the dirt off. Of course, we suspect that would not be very good for the bed nets so our focus now is to do awareness campaigns to inform people to stop washing the nets so often so that they can enjoy the nets for longer.

We distributed the nets to the interior and people like them very much. They are very thankful that there is no malaria in the villages any more. Most of the villages were before known before as malaria villages.

Background on Malaria control in the Suriname jungle

Malaria has been drastically reduced in the interior of Suriname, where it was a major health problem.  A successful control program had eradicated malaria from the coastal area, but the disease still threatened indigenous populations living deep in the jungle.

Suriname was granted financial support from the Global Fund in Round 3, which focused on distributing long lasting, insecticide treated nets to 90 percent of the population in the interior.

A combined hammock-bed net model was specially made by the factory to achieve maximum adherence in the local population and an aggressive nation-wide media campaign spread the message of prevention and treatment.  Over 50,000 bed nets were distributed, covering all of the targeted population and ensuring all children under five now sleep under a net.

The amount of malaria cases, the number of hospitalized patients with severe malaria and malaria deaths have been reduced by nearly 80 percent by mid 2007.