Study on efficacy of local wisdom of traditional mosquito repellent to Aedes aegypti mosquito under community participation in the South of Thailand

Abstract

Dengue fevers have been an important disease in Thailand for a long time ranking one of the major health problems in the country. Although there are various control strategies for dengue disease, the partici¬pation from the local community play an important role in the success for disease control. At present, a lot of local people have seen the value of local wisdom and used this to improve their life. The local communi¬ty in the southern part of Thailand has used mosquito-repellent made from local wisdom for a long time. The problem regarding mosquito-repellent made from local wisdom is that the repellent have not yet been tested to clearly determine their effectiveness. Therefore the objective of this research is to determine the effective¬ness of mosquito-repellent that is made from local wisdom from 14 provinces in Thailand. From the survey, out of 14 provinces a total of 11 mosquito-repellents were found from 7 provinces which include the following: Krabi, Phatthalung, Phangnga, Yala, Pattani, Trang, and Narathiwat. The testing for efficacy of mosquito-repellent followed the protocol from WHO/HTM/NTD/WHOPES/2009.4. The test is done by using 4 treated volunteers with mosquito-repellent made from local wisdom covering 30 cm2 on their left hand and on their right hand treated with 12% DEET, the rest of the hand is protected with gloves. The volunteers insert their arms into 30 cm3 the cage containing 200 non-blood feed female Aedes aegypti mosquitos for 24 hours, aged 5-7 days. The biting behavior was observed every half an hour each time after exposing to mosquito for 3 minutes, the experiment stop when 2 mosquito are observed probing, the experiment time last for maximum of 8 hours. The protective time average of the mosquito-repellent was calculated using the time elapsed between the starting of mosquito repellent applied until the mosquito observed probing. The result shows that 2 mosquito-repellents made from local wisdom have the protection that last for more than 2 hours which are biore orange repellent cream (Krabi) and Citronella Tamaindus repellent milk cream (Phatthalung). The result of this research was reported back to the local community to re-eval¬uate their self-reliance on their protection toward mosquito biting.