Tucked away in a building complex off Modderfontein Road in
Sandringham is one of Africa’s great scientific resources. It’s
not a supercomputer or an array of radio telescopes but a small,
square building filled with millions of mosquitoes. If all goes
according to plan, thousands of them will die within days. The
building – an insectary – is based at the campus of the National
Institute for Communicable Disease (NICD) and is run by
Professor Maureen Coetzee, one of the world’s foremost mosquito
experts and head of Wits University’s Malaria Entomology
Research Unit. Coetzee and her team of researchers study
mosquitoes and their role in spreading malaria, a disease that
may not have great impact in South Africa but which is one of
the most deadly on the continent. Malaria doesn’t exist in most
first world countries, thanks to a massive eradication campaign
spearheaded by the World Health Organisation in the 60s. But the
programme was never extended to Africa and, because of growing
resistance to both insectici