Gaming mosquito evolution to safeguard malaria control sustainability

20 May 2026

Mr Dingani Chinula, UCC-BEES doctoral candidate based at the Zambian Malaria Elimination Programme (ZMEP), has demonstrated that spraying neighbouring houses with different insecticides could bolster the sustainability of effective malaria vector control across Africa by slowing insecticide resistance evolution.

Mr Dingani Chinula, a UCC BEES Employment-Based PhD Scholar at the Zambian Malaria Elimination Programme (ZMEP), recently used 13 years of legacy data from one exceptionally well-monitored district to demonstrate how he and his team have steadily reduced rates of hospitalization due to severe malaria by over 90%, simply by spraying people’s houses with safe insecticide formulations.

Now, in a new paper just published, he has demonstrated how a very simple new approach to changing the rules of the evolution game for mosquitoes can make such life-saving vector control measures more sustainable in biological terms. Specifically, Dingani has demonstrated how spraying neighbouring houses with different complementary insecticides, to slow the evolution of mosquito resistance against such active ingredients over the long term, can be just as effective against malaria transmission over the short term as the current standard practice of blanket coverage with a single insecticide across entire villages, districts or provinces.

This innovation builds on previous successes with mass distribution of bednets, which often force mosquitoes to visit multiple houses in search of blood, thereby exposing themselves to two or more different insecticide formulations. The overall idea of these novel household-scale micro-mosaic formats for indoor residual spraying is to ensure most mosquitoes are exposed two or more insecticides, so that even those with incipient resistance traits against one active ingredient will be killed by another to which they remain susceptible. In essence, this approach exploits the behavioural plasticity of highly mobile mosquitoes, to extend the principles of combination drug therapy for managing antimicrobial resistance into the realm of vector control for preventing malaria. Although such effective vector control measures account for most of the 14 million malaria-related deaths averted globally since the turn of the century (https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa1606701 and https://www.who.int/teams/global-malaria-programme/reports/world-malaria-report-2025), malaria still remains the world’s most important parasitic and vector-borne disease.

Dingani Chinula is a Malaria Specialist at ZMEP and his recently submitted PhD was jointly supervised by Prof Gerry Killeen and Dr Tom Reed (Both UCC BEES, Ireland), Dr Samson Kiware (Ifakara Health Institute (IHI), Tanzania) and Dr Busiku Hamainza (Zambian Ministry of Health). Dingani’s paid study leave and research data collection were funded by ZMEC and his academic doctoral scholarship was funded by the UCC College of Science, Engineering and Food Science. Prof Killeen’s Research Chair position was jointly funded by the AXA Research Fund and the UCC College of Science, Engineering and Food Science. The employment-based scholarship model underpinning Dingani’s PhD enabled ZMEP, IHI and UCC to jointly support his professional development and career progression at his home institution in Zambia, where his skills and expertise are most relevant and greatly needed.