Background: Mosquitoes transmit serious human diseases, causing millions of deaths every year. Use of synthetic insecticides to control vector mosquitoes has caused physiological resistance and adverse environmental effects in addition to high operational cost. Insecticides of botanical origin have been reported as useful for control of mosquitoes. Azadirachta indica (Meliaceae) and its derived products have shown a variety of insecticidal properties. The present paper discusses the larvicidal activity of neem-based biopesticide for the control of mosquitoes.

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The “Malaria Evolution in South Asia” (MESA) program project is an International Center of Excellence for Malaria Research (ICEMR) sponsored by the US National Institutes of Health. This US–India collaborative program will study the origin of genetic diversity of malaria parasites and their selection on the Indian subcontinent. This knowledge should contribute to a better understanding of unexpected disease outbreaks and unpredictable disease presentations from Plasmodium falciparum and Plasmodium vivax infections. In this first of two reviews, we highlight malaria prevalence in India. In particular, we draw attention to variations in distribution of different human-parasites and different vectors, variation in drug resistance traits, and multiple forms of clinical presentations. Uneven malaria severity in India is often attributed to large discrepancies in health care accessibility as well as human migrations within the country and across neighboring borders. Poor access to health care goes hand in hand with poor reporting from some of the same areas, combining to possibly distort disease prevalence and death from malaria in some parts of India. Corrections are underway in the form of increased resources for disease control, greater engagement of village-level health workers for early diagnosis and treatment, and possibly new public–private partnerships activities accompanying traditional national malaria control programs in the most severely affected areas. A second accompanying review raises the possibility that, beyond uneven health care, evolutionary pressures may alter malaria parasites in ways that contribute to severe disease in India, particularly in the NE corridor of India bordering Myanmar Narayanasamy et al., 2012.

Anopheles fluviatilis, one of the major vectors of malaria in India, is a complex of at least three cryptic species provisionally designated as species S, T, and U. Identification of the cryptic species of An. fluviatilis complex is of paramount importance in disease control program due to contrasting differences in their vectorial efficiency, preference for feeding on humans, and resting behavior. Species S, T, and U are morphologically indistinguishable at any stage of their life cycle and can be identified only by the examination of species-specific fixed inversions in the polytene chromosomes. We report an allele-specific polymerase chain reaction assay for the differentiation of members of An. fluviatilis complex, which is based on differences in nucleotide sequences in D3 domain of 28S ribosomal DNA. The assay was evaluated against chromosomally examined individuals from different localities with different sympatric associations and was found to differentiate unambiguously all the members of the complex.