Widespread mosquito net fishing in the Barotse floodplain: Evidence from qualitative interviews

<div><p>Background</p><p>The insecticide-treated mosquito net (ITN) is a crucial component of malaria control programs, and has prevented many malaria cases and deaths due to scale up. ITNs also serve effectively as fishing nets and various sources have reported use of ITNs for fishing. This article examines how widespread the practice of mosquito net fishing with ITNs is.</p><p>Methods</p><p>We conducted in-depth interviews with fishery personnel and traditional leadership from the Barotse Royal Establishment in Western Province, Zambia, to better understand the presence or absence of the use of ITNs as fishing nets. We then coded the interviews for themes through content analysis. Additionally we conducted a desk review of survey data to show trends in malaria indicators, nutritional status of the population and fish consumption.</p><p>Results</p><p>All those interviewed reported that ITNs are regularly used for fishing in Western Zambia and the misuse is widespread. Concurrently those interviewed reported declines in fish catches both in terms of quantity and quality leading to threatened food security in the area. In addition to unsustainable fishing practices those interviewed referenced drought and population pressure as reasons for fishery decline. Malaria indicators do not show a trend in declining malaria transmission, fish consumption has dropped dramatically and nutritional status has not improved over time.</p><p>Conclusions</p><p>Despite the misuse of the ITNs for fishing all those interviewed maintained that ITN distribution should continue. Donors, control programs and scientists should realize that misuse of ITNs as fishing nets is a current problem for malaria control and potentially for food security that needs to be addressed.</p></div

Different fishing methods incorporating mosquito netting.

<p>Single mosquito nets can be used (A—orange circle highlights ITN meant to catch fish leaving the floodplain); Many mosquito nets can be sewn together as exhibited by these confiscated nets made up of more than 50 ITNs each (B).</p

Child malnutrition in Western Province, Zambia.

<p>Child malnutrition as measured by stunted growth in Western Province, Zambia.</p

Selected quotes from interviews with traditional leaders from the BRE and agency personnel.

<p>Selected quotes from interviews with traditional leaders from the BRE and agency personnel.</p

Selected quotes from interviews with traditional leaders from the BRE and agency personnel.

<p>Selected quotes from interviews with traditional leaders from the BRE and agency personnel.</p

Protein and fish consumption in Western Province, Zambia.

<p>Protein consumption, and fish consumption in particular in Western Province, Zambia decreased in 2013 compared to 2007 as measured by Demographic and Health Surveys. Chi-square statistic for change in any protein = 12.7576, p = 0.0007; chi-square statistic for change in fish consumption = 19.1685, p < 0.0001.</p

Additional file 1: of EchinoDB, an application for comparative transcriptomics of deeply-sampled clades of echinoderms

Table of 42 echinoderm specimens used for RNA-seq data that are contained in http://echinodb.uncc.edu . The BJ number is an internal reference code. The voucher number represents where any residual tissues and metadata are stored. RAW indicates the number of raw reads produced by Illumina sequencing. Quality filter and adapter removal indicates the number of reads remaining following fastxtoolkit quality filter of Q score > 20 and removal of adapter regions. Percent reads remaining indicates the fraction of raw reads retained after quality filtering and adapter removal. Percentage Reads removed indicates the fraction of reads removed by quality filtering and adapter removal from the raw reads. Number of Amino Acid Sequences Participating in Orthologous Clusters indicates number of contigs for each species that participated in orthoclusters. Note that contigs may be partially overlapping and redundant. NCBI BioProject Accession number indicates where the contigs have been submitted to NCBI (note the orthoclusters only exist on http://echinodb.uncc.edu ). (XLSX 33 kb