Since 2003, Zambia has been engaged in a large-scale, centrally coordinated national anti-Malaria campaign …which involved mass distribution of insecticide treated mosquito nets, intermittent preventive treatment for pregnant women, indoor residual spraying, rapid diagnostic tests, and artemisinin-based combination therapy.
…While we find rather robust correlations between the rollout of bed nets and subsequent improvements in our health measures, the link between regional spraying and individual level health appears rather weak in the data.
That is Ashraf, Fink and Weil in a new NBER paper. Ungated (possibly earlier) version here.
One Response
At first this looked like a very surprising finding. The experience of the US indicates that DDT is extremely effective at killing malaria-vector mosquitoes so this would be a big difference. Upon further examination, however, it looks like whatever Zambia is spraying is not DDT and hence this finding is right in line with my expectations.