VCPECInstitut Pierre Richet
An experimental hut station, an insectary, an insecticide testing laboratory, a molecular biology laboratory and study villages.
Drag to turn the hut
Mosquitoes enter through the gap between wall and roof, as in local homes.
The product being evaluated, hung over a volunteer sleeper.
It catches mosquitoes leaving the hut, to measure the repellent effect.
Dead or alive, fed or unfed, every mosquito is counted and scored.
Phase I
Products are first tested on reference colonies, then mosquitoes collected in the field are identified, dissected and analysed.
The insectary rears two reference colonies, the susceptible Anopheles gambiae Kisumu strain and an Anopheles coluzzii colony, routinely checked by bioassays and molecular biology. A guinea pig animal house provides their blood meals.
Cone, tube, tunnel and CDC bottle tests, on nets and on blocks treated for indoor spraying. It includes a net washing and storage room and a chemical store.
Species identification within the Anopheles gambiae complex, genotyping of resistance mutations, kdr and Ace-1, and ELISA tests on collected mosquitoes.
A secure server with access rights, validated statistical software and double data entry. Protocols, raw data and reports are kept in a GLP archive inspected every year.
Phase II
In the experimental huts and semi-field enclosures, products are evaluated on wild, free-flying mosquitoes, night after night.
About 35 km from Bouaké, huts built like local homes, with veranda traps, host trials on wild mosquitoes. The GLP-compliant station is described in the literature as a WHOPES-labelled site. Its mosquitoes, mainly Anopheles coluzzii, are highly resistant to pyrethroids yet still susceptible to chlorfenapyr, a demanding test bed for new-generation products.
Screened spaces under natural conditions, to measure mosquito behaviour around a house or device.
Phase III
In villages of central Côte d'Ivoire, the teams follow mosquitoes and malaria close to families, to measure the effect of tools at community scale.
Villages of the Gbêkê region and neighbourhoods of Bouaké, where entomological surveys and cluster-randomised trials take place.