Children wrapped in cloth treated in permethrin are contracting malaria less frequently.

Question

Nolen clearly lays out in the article how malaria has caused high death rates among children in Uganda due to mosquito transmission. She then explains how a study was conducted involving two groups of mothers with young children.

One group was given regular cloth to wrap their children in, while the other group was provided fabric treated with permethrin, a mosquito repellent. 34% of children in the group without treated fabric contracted malaria, whereas only 16% in the group with the treated fabric ended up contracting the disease.

Answer 1

1. After looking into the given NYT article and a deep dive searching into where this study came from, I found this to be true. I found the actual study, and they had control groups to see the actual difference in their study.
2. https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2501628  This source is the original scientific study that the original claim was talking about. It talks about how childrne that were wrapped in the insecticide cloth were less likely to get malaria than those that wernt wrapped in it.
3. The secondary source I found was the NYT article that the original post gave, diving deep into the background of the author, and giving lots of logos on why he started to do this. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/25/health/insecticide-treated-baby-wraps-carriers-malaria.html?smid=url-share
4.  The author of the NYT source might have a little bias, as it was his idea for the insecticide on the children's/babies' clothing, but with the study for the primary source, I didn't really recognize any bias. It was a pretty short source
5.  The evidence that can support this is the primary source I pasted the link for. Its the original study that is helping prove this claim.
6.  After searching around for more information on this claim for twenty or so minutes, I wasnt able to find anything that undermines this claim. Everything was just going back to the main scientific study.

7.(I was able to find the claim to be true before needing to contact the NYT writer.

Answer 2

In investigating the claim that children wrapped in permethrin treated cloth contract malaria less frequently, this claim seems to be true, but is only based upon a small study. This claim is based on a New York Times Article that explains the study conducted Dr. Ross Boyce, where it is stated that within the two control groups of 200, only 16% of the children in permethrin wraps contracted malaria, while 34% of the children in non-treated wraps contracted the disease. This is corroborated further by a primary source of Dr.Boyce's, which is an article he published in The New England Journal of Medicine, which also concluded that within the study, the permethrin wraps "significantly reduced" the chances of a child having malaria. This study is also published on other generally reputable medicine journals such as The National Library of Medicine. By further researching Dr.Boyce in order to determine his legitimacy, the UNC School of Medicine provides his profile, which shows his certifications, including being Board Certified for both Internal Medicine and Internal Medicine-Infectious Disease. This study seems to hold little bias due to the thorough nature of the study, which is supplemented by detailed Disclosure Forms, a Data Sharing Statement, and Protocol.