Mosquitoes are fighting back

Mosquitoes can quickly develop resistance to insecticide-treated nets, a new study from Senegal has found.

Researchers who studied malaria in a village in the West African country found growing resistance to the insecticide among Anopheles gambiae mosquitoes was causing a resurgence in the disease.

“These findings are of great concern,” the researchers, led by Jean-Francois Trape from the Development Research Institute in Dakar, wrote in a study in The Lancet Infectious Diseases journal.

Malaria kills almost 800,000 people a year, mainly children, in sub-Saharan Africa, with nets one of the main defences.