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| Wearing Mosquito Mafia shirts are researchers in the UC Davis Vector Genetics Lab (from left) undergraduate student Chau Sa Nguyen, laboratory specialist Claudio Meneses, and entomology doctoral student Melody Malpass. The sweatshirt design has "Mosquito Mafia" on the front and the design on the back. Proceeds from the sale of the shirts will be used to purchase anti-malaria bed nets in Africa. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey) |
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DAVIS--They're “Out for Blood.” A humanitarian project launched by the University of California, Davis Vector Genetics Lab is attacking malaria in Africa through the sale of “Mosquito Mafia: Out for Blood” shirts. Proceeds will be donated to the World Swim for Malaria, a program that provides bed nets in malaria-endemic regions.
“Malaria is a global, mosquito-borne disease that kills 2. 5 to 3 million people a year, and 90 percent of those deaths occur in Africa,” said UC Davis medical entomologist and professor Gregory Lanzaro, who directs the Vector Genetics Lab, UC Mosquito Research Program, the UC Malaria Research and Control Group and the Center for Vectorborne Diseases.
Lanzaro initiated the idea of “Mosquito Mafia” shirts. Graduate students and researchers in his vector genetics lab proposed the life-saving bed nets.
The design, the work of national award winning cartoonist Darrel Akers of Vacaville, shows a cigar-chomping, violin-toting “good fellow” armed with an assault weapon to combat mosquito-borne diseases.
The project comes on the heels of a UC Davis malaria research project last summer in the African countries of Mali and Cameroon. The five-member team included UC Davis entomologists Lanzaro, Anthony Cornel and Shirley Luckhart, and entomology doctoral students Tara Thiemann and Lisa Reimer.
“Every day some 8000 children alone die from the disease,” said Thiemann. Children under 5 and pregnant women are the most susceptible.
“The use of bed nets,” Reimer said, “offers both individual and community protection against malaria.” Statistics indicate that insecticide-treated bed nets in endemic regions can result in a 20 percent drop in mortality rates, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
The bed nets are treated with pyrethroid insecticides, which are highly toxic to the mosquitoes. Even at very low doses, a rapid knock-down effect results, according to the CDC.
Anopheles gambiae mosquitoes, which transmit the parasite that causes malaria, feed on humans at night and “rest” on the walls of their homes. Female mosquitoes require a blood meal to develop their eggs.
Vector Genetics Lab researcher Claudio Meneses, who is planning to participate in the 2006 World Swim for Malaria, said that bed nets are an important vector control, but the poor cannot afford them. The cost amounts to $5 in American money.
Meneses said the World Swim for Malaria is dedicated to providing bed nets where they are needed the most. “The single most effective way of preventing malaria is to have people in affected regions sleep under a $5 long-lasting mosquito net,” the Web site at indicates. “The equivalent of seven jumbo jets full of children die every day from malaria.”
The UC Davis research in Africa last summer in Africa included collecting adult mosquitoes resting on the walls of people’s homes as well as larvae in nearby pools of water.
The UC Davis researchers, who are exploring population structure, gene flow and insecticide resistance, are active in the newly formed UC Malaria Research and Control Group, comprised of scientists from four UC campuses and mosquito abatement experts throughout the state.
Further information on the “Mosquito Mafia” project is available from Nancy Dullum, program assistant, UC Mosquito Research Program, at (530) 752-6983 or nadullum@ucdavis.edu. The shirts are black with a white design. “Mosquito Mafia” is lettered in white, and “Out for Blood” in red. Short-sleeved shirts are $15; the long-sleeved shirts, $20, and the hooded sweatshirts, $30. There’s an additional $2 cost for XXL shirts. --Kathy Keatley Garvey
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