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A Worrying Trend – What if Malaria Control is Getting Harder?

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The most recent World Malaria Report, released in late 2017, held some sobering news. For the first time in recent years, progress against malaria appears to have stalled. From 2010 to 2015, there were steady reductions in numbers of malaria cases, mirroring substantial reductions in the number of estimated deaths caused by malaria. However, in 2016, there were an estimated 5 million more cases worldwide than in 2015, with the number of deaths staying more or less constant, for the first time since 2000.

Is LAMP Diagnostics the Key to Malaria Elimination?

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Malaria elimination is possible within a generation. But controlling malaria and eliminating malaria are different, and each pose certain challenges. Overcoming the unique challenges of malaria elimination is essential to meeting this goal, and the barriers presented in malaria elimination settings will require different strategies and policies.

Malaria Overview

NEWS

WHO: Urgent Call for End to Malaria Resurgence

The World Health Organization is joining a worldwide call to stop a resurgence of malaria that threatens much of the progress made over the past decade. To mark World Malaria Day, WHO is pushing for urgent action – and money – to get the global fight against this ancient scourge back on track.

Four Year Old Dies of Malaria in Italy

A four-year old girl has died of a severe form of malaria contracted in Italy, where the disease is supposed to have been eradicated years ago nearly half a century ago. Italy’s health ministry on Tuesday said it was sending experts to investigate the death Sofia Zago, who died in hospital in the northern city of Brescia overnight between Sunday and Monday.

Eradicate Malaria, Says Obama During State of Union Speech

Two days before delivering his last State of the Union address, President Obama called one of his top advisers into the Oval Office and said he had decided to add a major pledge to the speech that his team had neither discussed nor vetted: to rid the world of malaria… The result was two sentences in his State of the Union address about how, in part through American commitment, the world could soon “end the scourge of H.I.V./AIDS.”

WHO to Test Malaria Vaccine in Africa

The World Health Organization reported the agency would begin testing a promising malaria vaccine in October to see if it should be used in African countries affected by the parasitic disease.

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Research

Tools and Strategies for Malaria Control and Elimination: What Do We Need to Achieve a Grand Convergence in Malaria?

Progress made in malaria control during the past decade has prompted increasing global dialogue on malaria elimination and eradication. The product development pipeline for malaria has never been stronger, with promising new tools to detect, treat, and prevent malaria, including innovative diagnostics, medicines, vaccines, vector control products, and improved mechanisms for surveillance and response.

Does High-Dose Antimicrobial Chemotherapy Prevent the Evolution of Resistance?

High-dose chemotherapy has long been advocated as a means of controlling drug resistance in infectious diseases but recent empirical studies have begun to challenge this view. Researchers have developed a general framework for modeling and understanding resistance emergence based on principles from evolutionary biology.

Targeting the Cell Stress Response of Plasmodium Falciparum to Overcome Artemisinin Resistance

Successful control of falciparum malaria depends greatly on treatment with artemisinin combination therapies. Thus, reports that resistance to artemisinins (ARTs) has emerged, and that the prevalence of this resistance is increasing, are alarming. The researchers’ model predicts that extending current three-day ART treatment courses to four days, or splitting the doses, will efficiently clear resistant parasite infections.

Challenges in Modelling Infectious DIsease Dynamics

Malaria, HIV, and tuberculosis (TB) collectively account for several million deaths each year, with all three ranking among the top ten killers in low-income countries. Despite being caused by very different organisms, malaria, HIV, and TB present a suite of challenges for mathematical modellers that are particularly pronounced in these infections, but represent general problems in infectious disease modelling, and highlight many of the challenges described throughout this issue. Here, we describe some of the unifying challenges that arise in modelling malaria, HIV, and TB, including variation in dynamics within the host, diversity in the pathogen, and heterogeneity in human contact networks and behaviour. Through the lens of these three pathogens, we provide specific examples of the other challenges in this issue and discuss their implications for informing public health efforts.

Landscape Ecology and Epidemiology of Malaria Associated with Rubber Plantations in Thailand: Integrated Approaches to Malaria Ecotoping

The agricultural land use changes that are human-induced changes in agroforestry ecosystems and in physical environmental conditions contribute substantially to the potential risks for malaria transmission in receptive areas. Due to the pattern and extent of land use change, the risks or negatively ecosystemic outcomes are the results of the dynamics of malaria transmission, the susceptibility of human populations, and the geographical distribution of malaria vectors. This review focused basically on what are the potential effects of agricultural land use change as a result of the expansion of rubber plantations in Thailand and how significant the ecotopes of malaria-associated rubber plantations (MRP) are.

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