Beuy Joob1, Viroj Wiwanitkit2. 1. Sanitation 1 Medical Academic Center, Bangkok, Thailand. 2. Department Of Tropical Medicine, Hainan Medical University, Hainan Province, China.
Dear Editor,The recent publication on “mosquito net and snakebite” is very interesting.[1] Mallik et al. concluded that “Apart from mosquito and snakebite, nets can protect from deadly bites of other crawling creatures. Using such inherent fear from snakes/arthropods in the promotion of mosquito nets may have a greater impact in increasing actual usage of mosquito nets.[1]” We would like to raise some important considerations on this report by Mallik et al.[1] First, the effectiveness of mosquito net is proved for only prevention of small insect.[2] Whether the mosquito net is really effective against snakebite should be further verified. In fact, mosquito net is not complete close and easily openable by a little blow or force. Any reptile can easily enter inside the mosquito net, and crawling can cause sufficient force to open the mosquito net. Second, the suggestion to use “fear” for promotion seems unethical. This can be a “do harm,” a least psychological harm to the people, which is totally violate the basic principle in medicine, “first do no harm.”