Swiss Tropical and Public Health Institute, Côte d’Ivoire

In Côte d'Ivoire (West Africa), the steady and massive migration of rural inhabitants to the cities has become a problem. Therefore, projects promoting better management of food resources are being supported in rural areas. In the rapidly growing cities, Tropical Malaria is alarmingly on the rise. In the slums of Abidjan, open sewers and puddles provide ideal breeding grounds for the larvae of the malaria-transmitting Anopheles mosquito. The funds for sewage system construction are lacking, and mosquito nets are hardly affordable. In one slum, residents clean up plastic waste washed up and collected in the river that flows through their neighborhood on a daily basis. The cleaned plastic waste is then recycled. This helps alleviate the burden on their neighborhood and allows them to earn some money.