Wrap-up

The fictional village “Nsuhyia”, located in sub-Saharan Africa, illustrates the fight against malaria. In this video, Keziah L. Malm and Fredros Okumu visit Nsuhyia again to summarise what you explored during this week.

The first week of this course has ended. You examined many reasons that help explain why malaria is still a threat. You became familiar with the complex life cycle of the parasite that causes malaria and discovered that the Anopheles mosquitoes are highly adapted to finding and feeding on humans. These mosquitoes transmit – or vector, as we call it – the parasite that causes malaria.

Even if insecticides have helped to control mosquitoes, their use has not put a definite end to the threat of malaria. Mosquitoes adapt, and those that can survive the exposure to insecticides will predominate. Thus, we need to find new ways to control them. The objective will be to prevent, manage and mitigate insecticide resistance. How to do this is one of the questions we will address in the next week of this course.

But first: congratulations on everything that you achieved this week! Watch Keziah and Fredros summarise what you explored. Then you might want to have a first go at the game proposed to you in the link below. Have fun!