Mosquito nets in young children save lives into adulthood

Infant surrounded by protective malaria bed net. (Photo: © Arne Hoel/The World Bank | CC BY-NC-ND 2. Bed nets save lives in the long run. For the first time, a study indicates that children who sleep under a mosquito net at an early age are more likely to survive into adulthood. This is shown by a long-term study over two decades with 6,700 children in Tanzania. The study, published in the New England Journal of Medicine , followed more than 6,700 children from 1998, tracking them again in 2019 to find out what happened to them. The results showed that survival of children who habitually slept under nets was over 40% higher compared with survival in those who slept under nets less frequently in their early childhood.