Project continues despite Covid

Dr. Marion England (The Pirbright Institute, UK) and Dr. Kwakye-Nuako (University of Cape Coast, Ghana) have been working together on a community-call funded project to investigate the potential Culicoides vectors of human leishmaniasis in Ghana. They are also validating CO2-baited CDC light traps against explicit estimates of human biting to monitor Culicoides in affected areas without the need for human study participants.

Field work was due to commence in a remote village in Ghana in March, but unfortunately Covid-19 lockdown in Ghana began just prior to this, followed shortly after by lockdown in the UK. This delayed the start of field work by approximately four months, but as soon as it was permitted, Dr. Kwakye-Nuako and his team of field assistants travelled to the village and successfully carried out the Culicoides collections during July and August using human landing catches and CO2-baited traps.

During lockdown, Dr. England developed a key for the identification of Ghanaian Culicoides using existing species descriptions and keys for sub-Saharan Africa. Dr. England was originally planning on travelling to Ghana to train Dr. Kwakye-Nuako and colleagues on Culicoides morphology and identification, but due to Covid-19 advice against travel, following the completion of field work, the samples were shipped from Ghana to The Pirbright Institute. This was not a straightforward process, but once import licenses were in place, and after some work getting the samples released at the EU border in Brussels, they arrived in the UK. Dr. England is now processing the samples and they are hoping to have some very exciting results to share with the Gnatwork community at the completion of the project in December.