An innovative program run in Canada is funding international minds in order to solve some of the toughest global health challenges. Grand Challenges Canada draws on a budget of $225 million spread over five years, committed by the government in 2008 as part of its foreign aid budget. The foundation has announced a $400,000 grant which will help realize a device that will combat malaria. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is also contributing $500,000 to the project.

Developed by Dr. Fredros Okumu of Ifakara Health Institute in Tanzania, it is a simple device which will capture and kill mosquitoes that fly into it — it may be not any more complicated than your usual fruit fly trap, but the point is this: Dr. Okumu has discovered that malaria-carrying mosquitoes gather on dirty-sock-smell four times more than they gather on humans. So putting in some old socks — or a synthetic equivalent — will make this mosquito-trapping device really effective. Okumu says that feet are one of the key sources of the odor which allows mosquitoes to identify humans.

As with all good discoveries, this was one of those sweet scientific accidents — researchers noticed that mosquitoes were drawn to dirty socks (since they navigate by smell, not sight) and then tested further to develop a trapping device. They confirmed it by having people wear socks for 10 hours and then using them as bait. Hive-shaped devices will be hung outside in villages to compliment the nets and sprays already in use. The traps are made with local materials by local carpenters, to be produced for between $4 and $27 — Grand Challenges Canada says that Okumu is “a young, innovating, dedicated person who is trying to solve African problems with African innovation”. They believe that “innovators in low- and middle-income countries are best suited to solve their own problems.”

Malaria is diagnosed 250 million times a year, and almost 800,000 people die from the disease, most of them children. Thanks to this grant, the local community will work on developing the device within the next two years and on making it easily available to the public. Canada is the only country that takes a “grand challenges approach to international development”, and it may be doing quite a lot of good. Who knew that dirty socks could be so useful?  You can check out the other projects the foundation is funding by checking out their website.

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All images: dr_relling/Flickr, via NewsWire