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New Nets Project (NNP)

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#Malaria #NNP #LLIN #IRM #IVM

IVCC lead a consortium of partners on the New Nets Project (NNP), which piloted insecticidal nets treated with new insecticide combinations in moderate to high transmission areas throughout sub-Saharan Africa.

The New Nets Project Between 2018 and 2022, the project built the evidence needed to allow the World Health Organisation (WHO) to make a policy recommendation for dual active in nets. It also assessed their cost-effectiveness under pilot conditions. The project and its partners sought not only to establish the necessary evidence base needed to support an appropriate policy recommendation, but to also make the new nets a sustainable choice for countries looking for the best value for money in controlling malaria.

Project Aims

Mosquitoes are becoming increasingly resistant to the pyrethroid insecticides used on insecticidal treated nets, and this may reduce the nets’ ability to protect people from malaria, so we must continue to develop and test new tools. The New Nets Project (NNP) worked with the next generation of nets, which are dual insecticide nets. NNP will build the epidemiological evidence needed to allow WHO to make the policy recommendation confirming that countries with pyrethroid resistance should consider them over standard nets. Under this project, the nets were assessed in robust studies in Benin and Tanzania (funded by the Wellcome Trust) to give definitive evidence of how well they perform compared to standard nets.

The project assessed the cost-effectiveness of the nets under operational pilot conditions, across countries representing different epidemiological, insecticide resistance and entomological profiles. The nets were first deployed in 2019 in Burkina Faso in West Africa. Additional countries were selected for pilots in 2020, 2021 and 2023. These pilots built understanding about the extra benefit these nets can bring in different settings, as well as operational learnings on the deployment of new types of nets. This information will help countries make informed decisions about how best to spend their malaria control budgets.

The catalytic market shaping work under NNP to increase supply and demand have laid the foundation for ensuring equitable and affordable access to novel vector control products. This was enhanced by the joint work of UK-based social finance company MedAccess and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation who supported access to the new nets in 20+ countries by providing a volume guarantee that enabled BASF to reduce the price procurers pay for the nets.