IVCC has signed a licence agreement with Tagros Chemicals India to manufacture and commercialise Insecticide Quantification Kits (IQKs) in India, and other countries in Asia. IQKs, developed by researchers at LSTM and Rajendra Memorial Research Institute of Medical Sciences (RMRI), India, will be also available in Africa through an agreement between IVCC and South African company Avima (Pty) Ltd. The development into a commercial testing kit of the IQKs was funded by the Wellcome Trust.
The licence with Tagros Chemicals India, based in Chennai, incorporates all major classes of insecticides used in Indoor Residual Spraying (IRS). Tagros is now setting up manufacture of the IQKs with the first versions available to control programmes in 2017.
IQKs enable rapid and low cost assessment of the quantities of insecticide applied to homes to protect communities from visceral leishmaniasis and malaria infection. The sandflies and mosquitoes that carry these diseases are killed by the insecticides sprayed on the walls but only if correct amounts have been applied. Current methods to detect the quantities of insecticide are very expensive and time-consuming, so testing kits that can be deployed on site offer the potential for a major improvement in quality assurance of spray programmes.
Dr Nick Hamon, CEO of IVCC, said “We are very pleased to have secured the involvement of Tagros to make the most of this technology for the benefit of control and eradication efforts on visceral leishmaniasis and malaria. This represents an important expansion of the access to the technology from Africa to Asia.”
Mr Jobi Eapen, Head of Public Health Business at Tagros, said, “As one of the world’s largest manufacturers of synthetic pyrethroids and a company that operates to international quality standards, IQKs are a natural fit for our public health product portfolio.”
Wellcome’s award for the IQK was made to the Principal Investigators, LSTM’s Dr. Mark Paine and Dr. Pradeep Das, Director of RMRI. Dr. Paine said: “The availability of the IQK is an important step forward in enabling programme managers to report on the quality of their operations and its ease of use means that large numbers of samples can be processed on a daily basis, improving the quality of control programmes in the areas where they are needed the most.”
Dr Mark Paine on the importance of IQKs: