Abstract
Insecticide use remains one of the most common strategies worldwide for controlling household pests and disease vectors, despite growing concerns over misuse, health risks, and the emergence of insecticide resistance. To document household insecticide use and flea infestation across a gradient of plague endemicity in Madagascar, we used a multidisciplinary approach. A descriptive household survey and an observational checklist were implemented with 422 respondents and combined with flea infestation assessment based on flea sampling from small mammals and candle traps. Household insecticide use was primarily reported for pest control (92.4%), mainly targeting fleas (70.3%) and was generally applied reactively rather than preventively. Even though males constituted the majority of respondents (85.0%), mothers are reported to play a primary role in insecticide application (41.4%) and in the purchase (48.2%) of chemical products. Overall, good insecticide practices were observed in 51.3% of households, although the difference between good and poor practice categories was not statistically significant (p = 0.83). Comprehensive understanding of household insecticide use is crucial to implement effective integrated pest management, optimize vector control strategies, minimize selective pressures driving resistance, and protect both human health and the environment.
Acknowledgements
We extend our sincere gratitude to the Centre Valbio Ranomafana for their essential logistical support. We particularly thank Lanto Andrianarijaona Maminirina, Césaire Tianandriatsiferana, Farida Juliette for their invaluable contributions to this study. Our deepest appreciation goes to all participating community members for their time and cooperation, as well as to the local authorities in the villages visited for facilitating this research.
Funding
This study was supported by the Branco Weiss Fellowship—Society in Science (https://brancoweissfellowship.org) and the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene through the Centennial Travel Award, 2021 (https://www.astmh.org) awarded to Adelaide Miarinjara. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Ethics declarations
Competing interests
The authors declare no competing interests.
Additional information
Publisher’s note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Supplementary Information
Below is the link to the electronic supplementary material.
Supplementary Material 1. (download XLSX )
Supplementary Material 2. (download PDF )
Supplementary Material 3. (download XLSX )
Supplementary Material 4. (download XLSX )
Supplementary Material 5. (download XLSX )
Rights and permissions
Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License, which permits any non-commercial use, sharing, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if you modified the licensed material. You do not have permission under this licence to share adapted material derived from this article or parts of it. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/.
Reprints and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Raveloson, A.O., Kassié, D., Ramasindrazana, B. et al. Household insecticide uses and flea infestation in plague-endemic regions of Madagascar.
Sci Rep (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-026-58390-5
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-026-58390-5
Keywords
- Community survey
- Pest control
- Plague
Pulex irritans
Xenopsylla cheopis
Yersinia pestis
Source: Ecology - nature.com
