WHO/VBC alternative methods of vector control: Toxorhynchites project. report of consultants’ visit to Dar es Salaam, 28 March to 21 April 1971.

Corbet, P.S. and Smith, S.M. 1971. WHO/VBC alternative methods of vector control: Toxorhynchites project. report of consultants’ visit to Dar es Salaam, 28 March to 21 April 1971. Typescript. Abstract 1. This project comprises a significant portion of the WHO/VBC program for alternative methods of vector control. The intention in to mount a program of such caliber that the results obtained, whether they be defined as a success or a failure, will have a high probability of being unambiguous. The Toxorhynchites project has 2 objectives: •to conduct a feasibility study to determine whether, in any locality, Toxorhynchites can be employed in an inundation program to depress a vector population;•to use the predator in a real-life situation to protect a human population from a vector-borne disease. These 2 objectives define the stages by which the project will proceed. 2. The purposes of the consultants’ visit to Dar as Salaam were the following: •to select a site, possibly an island, that would be suitable for the feasibility stage of the project;•to undertake the necessary survey work at the proposed experimental site to permit the construction of protocols specifying, in detail, the procedures to be used in the inundative release trial; •to estimate the resources needed to implement the protocols. 3. While at Dar es Salaam, the consultants undertook their duties in 3 stages: •the assessment of several offshore coral islands as possible sites for the feasibility trial;•a review of this assessment leading to the decision not to use an island and to seek an urban site suitable for this trial;•groundwork in the urban site in preparation for the writing of protocols. 4. The assessment of the offshore islands led to the conclusion that, whether or not the project were based at the East Africa Aedes Research Unit, it should not be conducted on one of these islands. None of the islands provides a biotope suitable for the survival of adult Toxorhynchites; their size, location and vegetation present serious logistical problems; and the islands represent a biotope sufficiently different from the one in which the 2nd stage of the project would presumably be mounted (viz. a peridomestic biotope) to vitiate the predictive value of an inundation trial conducted there. The attributes of a site that would be suitable for the feasibility trial are specified and it is concluded that a site having many or all of the necessary characteristics could be found in the city of Dar es Salaam. The .zip archive •an aerial photograph of Bongoyo Island (October 1969 at 1617 from 6500 feet) (SD / TANZ.673 / FILM 1797 / OCT. 1969 / 6500' AMSL / WILD AVIOGON 6")•an aerial photo of Mbudya and Pangavini Islands, and scans of black-and-white photographs of habitats on the islands as well as from the tire dump at Buguruni (including a photo of a 4th-instar larva of Tx. brevipalpis preying on a sarcophagid adult.