Malaria patient develops soap to repel mosquitos

The FasoSoap consists of a mosquito repellent made from shea butter, African marigold, essential lemongrass oil and other ingredients that are still a secret. All the ingredients are natural and available locally in Burkina Faso. This solution, added to locally manufactured soap, provides a very accessible, low-cost anti-malarial tool.

After using the soap, it leaves a scent on the skin that repels mosquitos up to 6 hours after use. This innovation works by promoting the prevention of malaria.

The inventor developed this solution with Moctar Dembélé when they were students.

In Gérard’s country, the majority of the population lives below the poverty line, and most people can't afford to regularly buy medicine and products such as anti-mosquito creams, sprays or protective nets. This drove him to create a repellent and larvicidal mosquito soap which will be accessible and affordable to the majority of the population, seeing that soap is a commodity product and especially not going to add other additional costs to the population. They decided to create a soap because soap is the one product you can find in all African family homes.

"Soap is one product you can find in all African family homes, no matter how poor they are," the inventor explained.

"Most people wash in the evening and you want to be protected before you go to bed at night. Our soap will fulfill the desire of the population to be clean, as well as protect them from malaria, without any additional cost to them. Soap is used to wash both bodies and clothes and is one of the few products to be in 95 per cent of African households – not only is it a stable product but it is something that people use every day in Africa,” said Gérard.

The engineer created “100.000 Vies”, a non-profit organization in Ouagadougou (Burkina Faso) to develop the Faso Soap project.

FasoSoap won the Grand Prize winner of the 2013 Global Social Venture Competition (GSVC) and winner of the Blum Center People’s Choice Award. At the April 12th GSVC Global Conference, the team behind this anti-malaria initiative was awarded $26,500 in prize money to jump-start their business. Faso Soap is the first non-American team to win GSVC. They launched a crowdfunding campaign, in 2016, “Save 100,000 Lives”, hoping to raise $113,000 to test and manufacture the soap. The goal is to save 100,000 lives in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Tanzania, Ghana, Nigeria and Uganda, through malaria prevention by 2018.
Using crowdfunding, they raised enough funds to work towards production but it’s not still commercialized.

More info: https://www.faso-soap.info

Adapted from: http://cnn.it/20dWDTs
https://youtu.be/UylukH5UD-w