Home Funded Projects A plant-based mosquito repellent from marigold, lemongrass & eucalyptus
Achieving Sustainable Health
A plant-based mosquito repellent from marigold, lemongrass & eucalyptus
A safe, affordable repellent brewed from three common Ugandan plants — for the outdoor evening hours that bed nets can't reach.
Bed nets protect people indoors, but not outside in the evening. This project turns three familiar Ugandan plants into an affordable repellent for exactly that gap.
The challenge
Uganda remains one of six countries carrying the world's highest malaria burden. Bed nets and indoor spraying have saved many lives — but mosquitoes are growing resistant to the pyrethroids nets rely on, and neither tool protects people outdoors in the evening.
That leaves a wide-open gap in personal protection, exactly when and where many bites happen.
The approach
The team formulated a poly-herbal repellent from marigold, lemongrass and eucalyptus — plants grown locally and already familiar to communities. They set up High-Performance Thin-Layer Chromatography to standardise and refine the formulation for stability and shelf life.
The repellent was then put through laboratory efficacy and safety testing, followed by field trials in malaria-endemic regions.
A repellent brewed from local plants, for the outdoor evening hours that bed nets cannot reach.
Results & impact
The result is a low-cost, culturally acceptable repellent for use when people are outdoors or away from their nets — complementing existing tools rather than replacing them.
Because it is built from locally available plants, it sidesteps the resistance problem facing synthetic insecticides, and it strengthens Uganda's own capacity to develop home-grown malaria innovations.
This research was funded by the Government of Uganda through the Makerere University Research and Innovations Fund — one of a growing directory of projects turning national investment into real-world results.
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