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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
World
Kat Lay Global health correspondent

Cloth wraps treated with ‘dirt cheap’ insecticide cut malaria cases in babies

Malaria Uganda United States
An African mother carries her baby as she harvests coffee on a farm in Uganda.
An African mother carries her baby as she harvests coffee on the family's farm in Uganda. Most malaria deaths occur in African children under five. Photograph: Jake Lyell/Alamy

From Africa to Latin America to Asia, babies have been carried in cloth wraps on their mothers’ backs for centuries. Now, the practice of generations of women could become a lifesaving tool in the fight against malaria.

Researchers in Uganda have found that treating wraps with the insect repellent permethrin cut rates of malaria in the infants carried in them by two-thirds.

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