NOTHING BUT NETS

How insecticide treated bed nets became a staple of global public health initiatives and reshaped health practices in Africa and beyond Distributed to millions of people annually across Africa and the global south insecticide treated bed nets have become a cornerstone of malaria control and twenty first century global health initiatives Despite their seemingly obvious public health utility however these chemically infused nets and their rise to prominence were anything but inevitable In Nothing But Nets Kirsten Moore Sheeley untangles the complicated history of insecticide treated nets as it unfolded transnationally and in Kenya specifically a key site of insecticide treated net research to reveal how the development of this intervention was deeply enmeshed with the emergence of the contemporary global health enterprise While public health workers initially conceived of nets as a stopgap measure that could be tailored to impoverished rural health systems in the early 1980s nets became standardized market goods with the potential to save lives and promote economic development globally This shift attracted donor resources for malaria control amid the rise of neoliberal regimes in international development but it also perpetuated a paradigm of fighting malaria