Report of the twelfth WHOPES working group meeting, WHO/HQ, Geneva 8–11 December 2008

Overview

The twelfth meeting of the WHOPES Working Group, an advisory group to the WHO Pesticide Evaluation Scheme (WHOPES), was convened at WHO headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland, from 8 to 11 December 2008. The objective of the meeting was to review the reports of testing and evaluation of BioFlash GR, a Bacillus thuringiensis israelensis product of Nature Biotechnology Company (Islamic Republic of Iran) for mosquito larviciding, as well as those of four long-lasting insecticidal mosquito nets (LNs) for prevention of malaria: PermaNet 2.0; PermaNet 2.5 (=PermaNet 2.0 Extra); PermaNet 3.0 (Vestergaard Frandsen, Switzerland); and Lambda-cyhalothrin LN (=ICON MAXX-Net) of Syngenta, Switzerland.

The meeting was attended by 14 scientists (see Annex I: List of participants). Professor Dr Marc Coosemans was appointed as Chairman and Dr Purushothaman Jambulingam as Rapporteur. The meeting was convened in plenary and group sessions, in which the reports of the WHOPES supervised trials and relevant published literature and unpublished reports were reviewed and discussed (see Annex II: References). Recommendations on the use of the above-mentioned products were made.