Copyright nytimes
As an American medical resident in a global health program in Uganda 12 years ago, Dr. Ross Boyce saw the devastating toll of malaria firsthand. About half of the patients he saw in a rural clinic had the disease. Most were very young children; many recovered with treatment, but some did not survive. Dr. Boyce noticed something else: All of the Ugandan mothers carried their babies tied on their backs with a wide piece of cotton. And this made him think about the clothing he wore long before medical school, when he was deployed to Iraq as an infantry officer: the U.S. military treated his uniforms with permethrin, a long-acting insecticide, to protect against mosquito-borne illnesses. Dr. Boyce floated an idea among his Ugandan colleagues: Could they treat baby wraps in insecticides too? Might that keep mosquitoes away from babies? One colleague thought it was worth a try. They needed new solutions, said Dr. Edgar Mulogo, a professor of public health at Mbarara University of Science and Technology, because progress against malaria had stalled.
