In Uganda, field trials concerning the patch designed to make people 'invisible' to disease-transmitting mosquitoes are under way.
The Kite Patch is a small sticker for clothes that works by disrupting mosquitoes' ability to sense exhaled carbon dioxide (CO2) and human odour - the key known ways by which the insect finds people to bite.
A single patch is designed to provide protection for two days and to be effective against all mosquito species. As the CO2-sensing mechanism is common to all species of mosquitoes, the patch should be effective against all.
After undergoing preliminary laboratory tests, the patch is now ready for large-scale production and field-testing, and the company is crowd sourcing funds to assess the patch in Uganda.
"Uganda is among the countries experiencing the highest rates of malarial infection, particularly in children under the age of five," Grey Frandsen, project leader on Kite Patch, tells SciDev.Net.
"It's a country that will allow us to test our technology in a range of different settings," he adds.
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