The Chagas disease vector Triatoma infestans is largely controlled by the household application of pyrethroid insecticides. Because effective, large-scale insecticide application is costly and necessitates numerous trained personnel, alternative control techniques are badly needed. We compared the residual effect of organophosphate-based insecticidal paint (Inesfly 5A IGR™ (I5A)) to standard deltamethrin, and a negative control, against T. infestans in a simulated natural environment. We evaluated mortality, knockdown, and ability to take a blood meal among fifth instar nymphs. I5A paint caused significantly greater mortality at time points up to 9 months compared to deltamethrin (Fisher's Exact Test, p < 0.01 in all instances). A year following application mortality among nymphs in the I5A was similar to those in the deltamethrin (χ2 = 0.76, df=1, p < 0.76). At months 0 and 1 after application, fewer nymphs exposed to deltamethrin took a blood meal compared to insects exposed to paint (Fisher's Exact Tests, p < 0.01 and p < 0.01 respectively). Insecticidal paint may provide an easily-applied means of protection against Chagas disease vectors.
Control of the Chagas disease vector, Triatoma infestans, relies on the application of pyrethroid insecticides, especially deltamethrin. We performed laboratory studies to determine whether a T. infestans nymph that comes into contact with a deltamethrin-treated surface horizontally transfers the insecticide to subsequent triatomines. We found that a triatomine that walks on a deltamethrin-treated surface for a short period of time has the ability to transport the insecticide in concentrations sufficient to kill other triatomines with which it comes into contact. The effect was limited to high-density environments, and mortality as a result of secondary exposure was greater among second-instar nymphs compared with fifth-instar nymphs. Our results suggest that deltamethrin could be killing triatomines through both direct and indirect contact, although it remains unclear whether the phenomenon occurs in natural conditions.
Countless women and girls have been abducted, raped, forcibly assigned as ‘wives’ to combatants and held captive within such forced marriages in conflict zones around the world. Forced marriage as an international crime remains controversial because it (i) is not codified in any international criminal statute, (ii) involves conduct overlapping with already-enumerated crimes against humanity and (iii) is inconsistently defined. Legal protections for girls in forced marriage reside in historical proscriptions against various forms of slavery — banned by jus cogens norms, international human rights and humanitarian law — including the crimes against humanity of sexual slavery and enslavement. Yet, despite similarities between forced marriage and numerous forms of slavery, international criminal courts have not yet prosecuted or convicted forced marriage as enslavement, and even its conviction as sexual slavery insufficiently captures the unique, multi-layered injuries its youngest victims suffer. International tribunals confronting evidence of very young girls captured as ‘wives’ and of female child soldiers serving as sex slaves have failed to adequately recognize or redress the egregious harms girl endure through forced marriage. Competing judicial and academic views on its proper classification have obscured courts’ oversight of forced marriage’s most vulnerable victims — female children. This article argues that, to advance justice for girls in conflict zones and end impunity for these atrocities, greater judicial emphasis is needed on the constellation of internationally recognized fundamental human rights of children violated by forced marriage, whether prosecuted as an ‘other inhumane act’ or slavery-related crime against humanity.
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