From Africa to Latin America to Asia, babies have been carried in cloth wraps on their mothers' backs for centuries. Now, the practice of generations of women could become a lifesaving tool in the fight against malaria. Researchers in Uganda have found that treating wraps with the insect repellent permethrin cut rates of malaria in the infants carried in them by two-thirds.
Cuba is battling a wave of mosquito-borne illnesses, with the country's top epidemiologist warning that nearly one-third of the population has been impacted, with large numbers of workers taken ill. On Thursday, fumigators armed with fogging machines probed alleys and crowded buildings in parts of the capital Havana, among the hardest hit by mosquito-borne viruses including dengue and chikungunya, authorities said.