During his final Board of Directors meeting as Executive Director of the CSRS and in anticipation of the upcoming handover of duties, Prof. Koné Inza led a delegation—comprising Dr. Jürg Pfister, Secretary General of the Swiss Academy of Natural Sciences (SCNAT), and Professor Jérémie Zoueu, the incoming Executive Director of the Swiss Center—on a visit to the Tiasssalé research station on Sunday, June 14.

The field team, made up of researchers and laboratory technicians, warmly welcomed the visitors, taking turns to enthusiastically explain their daily tasks in the testing process.

Located in the town of Tiassalé, the GLP (Good Laboratory Practice) experimental station was established in 2017 to conduct Phase 1 (laboratory), Phase 2 (semi-natural conditions), and Phase 3 (community-level) trials.

Accredited for Good Laboratory Practices since 2023, it consists of three sites, one of which is a research station featuring an insectarium for breeding mosquitoes, a laboratory for conducting mosquito efficacy and sensitivity tests, a room dedicated to observing and identifying mosquitoes after testing and collection in experimental plots, an animal facility, and a room for manually washing mosquito nets. The other two sites consist of 41 experimental huts—20 at the first site and 21 at the second. These huts are used to evaluate the effectiveness of vector control tools such as mosquito nets, insecticides, etc., while simulating natural conditions, and are located directly across from a rice paddy, which is conducive to the breeding of one of the most resistant mosquito strains in the world. This multi-resistant “Tiassalé strain” has made this station one of the most sought-after in the world by industry players in the sector to evaluate the effectiveness of their products.

Tiassalé was the first stop on a tour of the CSRS’s thematic research sites in Côte d’Ivoire.

On Monday, June 15, the delegation, still led by Prof. Koné, visited the Bringakro station and finally the HDSS (Demographic and Health Surveillance System) site in Taabo.

Representing SCNAT on the Board of Directors, which will meet on Tuesday, June 16, Dr. PFISTER expressed particular interest in the research being conducted at the sites visited, which could lead to the development and strengthening of collaboration with this long-standing partner—a champion of international scientific cooperation that helped establish the CSRS 75 years ago.

Ange Koné/CelCom