“The Eave Tubes is nothing more than a ventilation tube that provides concentrated air,” explains Osinga. The pipe is intended to be installed under the eaves of a house. Humans have a body temperature of 37 degrees and their scent rises. In the Eave Tubes the scents of people are bundled into a point source. “Malaria mosquitoes are very eager to find people to bite into. They want to take a blood meal in order to reproduce,” says Osinga.
Anne Osinga
Lure mosquitoes to central place
“The thought was; if I bundle that smell of people into point sources, then that is the place where the mosquito wants to enter the house.” And with that it is also the place where you can kill the mosquito with insecticide.
“There is a statically charged mesh in the tube. I can apply powdered insecticide on it. If the mosquito lands on that mesh, it will get a very large amount of powder on her body in five seconds. The mosquito is the magnet and all those powder particles. jump on that mosquito very quickly. So much so that even resistant mosquitoes don’t survive. ” According to Osinga, this method is much more effective than a mosquito net or indoor spraying.
Eave Tubes in the wall
Compare bees and mosquitoes
The idea for the Eave Tubes arose from another invention by Osinga: an insect screen that also removes pollen from the air. “In the summer months you want to ventilate nicely, but you don’t want hay fever. So I thought: can’t I add something to that insect screen that will keep the allergenic pollen that causes hay fever on the mesh?”
Osinga discovered that pollen is negatively charged and bees are positively charged, so that they carry pollen around. By applying a static positively charged coating to the insect screen, he was able to catch the pollen. “For example, we filter between 91 and 99 percent of all allergenic pollen from the air. I thought, if I can, then I can infect mosquitoes in a smarter way.”
Osinga then made the comparison to the malaria mosquito: “If it flaps its wings, just like it does, then it is also statically charged. And so it picks up powder.” The researcher from Oostvoorne continued to research this at the company In2Care and this led to the Eave Tubes.
Houses in Ivory Coast with the Eave Tubes
Support from Bill Gates
To validate the product, Osinga had it examined at an institute in Liverpool. “That institute is very heavily subsidized by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Those people saw this invention and said: this is revolutionary.”
“That’s how the story ended up with the foundation. They called us and asked how they could help us get it on the market.” The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation made a donation of more than nine million euros available.
Need further investigation
Despite a successful trial, the product of the World Health Organization (WHO) is not yet allowed on the market and that is a disappointment for Osinga. “This trial that we did in Ivory Coast was one of the requirements they set and has now been successfully completed. We had hoped that we were done with this, but unfortunately we still have to do the same research in another area in Africa. “
The researcher is therefore currently preparing for the next trial in Tanzania. “Unfortunately that will take another three years and it will cost another three million euros.” And that frustrates Osinga. According to the inventor, it has been shown to work and to be safe.
With the publication in Thursday’s The Lancet, Osinga hopes that the investigation will go faster, as with COVID-19. “Our motivation is to make a real impact. Then doing scientific research is very interesting, but you don’t make an impact with it.”
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