Since 2014, the Bioko Island Malaria Elimination Project (BIMEP) IRS program has been collaborating with the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine on IRS quality control monitoring.
Most recently, in 2018, the BIMEP with LSTM’s support conducted the quality control of the performance of 60 spray operators spraying the organophosphate insecticide pirimiphos-methyl (Actellic 300CS) using high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC). Critically, we were able to collect spray samples, send them to LSTM and receive data within two – three weeks. Since the introduction of the quality control procedure, which has been published (Fuseini et al. Malar J (2020)), not a single house has been falsified as being sprayed, thereby enabling the project to report real IRS overage, and the performance of the spray operators has also markedly improved. Key to this success was the rapid HPLC data turnaround by LSTM that allowed us to monitor spray operators in real time and implement refresher training where necessary.
Guillermo Garcia, MSc
Program Manager
Bioko Island Malaria Elimination Project
Equatorial Guinea