ENDURE CHICKEN 'SMELL' WHILE YOU SLEEP AND BE HAPPY BY MORNING - SCIENTISTS

Do you have a poultry in your house or do you have access to a poultry? Anyhow it turns, whether you have or have access to poultry, this could mean good news for many of you in any of the categories, depends on how you receive the news though. *winks*

Recently, a group of Ethiopian scientists reported that they have discovered from their research that ‘chicken smell’ can repel mosquitos as the smell seemed repulsive to the insects thereby giving way for new way of preventing malaria which is still killing thousands of people every year especially in Africa.

According to Professor Habte Tekie who led the team of insect experts who went into proper investigation after they noticed that mosquitos stayed away from chickens but would rather bite human and other animals, told AFP that “We went into the chemical basis involved in repelling malaria mosquitoes by odours emanating from the chickens… The results show that compounds from chicken have very good potential as repellent. One theory for their behaviour is that mosquitoes see chickens as a predator, so seek to avoid them.

  

The group of scientists were said to have used three villages in western Ethiopia as their population sample by carrying out tests which revealed that the group of families that slept overnight underneath a chicken in a cage were not bitten by mosquitos all night while those whose homes were without indoor poultry were not  spared by the mosquitos.

Now many people will say that looks and sounds weird especially when you have to imagine a chicken cage over your head while you sleep at night. Laughs.

You are not alone because I and many others who have also discussed it also think it is not only weird but gross.  Someone actually said sounds not only weird but would term it a sort of ‘ritual’ on seeing it if he walked into one of those homes sampled in Ethiopia.

Understandably, the scientist s are not ignorant to peoples’ concerns that it would be a ‘long walk in the park’ for many to sleep underneath chicken cages tried another method which as a follow-up experiment by supplying the same sampled villages with vials of chicken extract which revealed similar results thereby proving another step further that mosquitos really get repulsed by the mere smell of chicken.  

So, is this good news or not?

For me, I think if properly refined and looked into given the proposed collaboration as  published in the medical publication Malaria Journal that the findings will be used in a new collaboration with Swedish scientists to develop an odourless repellent, then it should be received as ‘good news’ even as Professor Tekie has affirmed that  “This repellent will be safe for human use, (with) no residues contaminating soil or water or poisoning people and it can easily be integrated into malaria control operations,”.

We truly hope this turns out right as Malaria which according to the World Health Organization  killed about 438,000 people in 2015,  is still ravaging and threatening thousands not only in Ethiopia but also other African nations and sadly, scientists are yet to come up with an accepted vaccine as research is still ongoing hence we have to keep our hopes alive that the ‘chicken stock’ alternative may very well turn out the ‘way out’ of the fight against malaria even as the scientists have acknowledged that  it will be  “entirely natural,” and the chance of mosquitoes developing resistance “minimal”.

So let’s keep our fingers crossed and our hearts at rest since we are now assured that we wouldn’t have to sleep with chicken cages over our beds.