Last week’s UN General Assembly and Climate Summit in New York once again highlighted the critical need to reduce carbon emissions to prevent catastrophic climate change, which will adversely affect people’s livelihoods and security around the world. The opening statement by the President of the General Assembly, His Excellency Sam Kahamba Kutesa, gave prominence to important topics such as food … [Read more...]
Integrated Strategies for Vector Control: Are They Feasible?
The idea of “integration” of disease efforts is gaining ground in the public health world. But what does that mean in the case of malaria, and will it actually work? With increasing pressure on public health spending to maximize efficiency and efficacy, from both donor agencies as well as within individual governments and Ministries of Health, there has been a push to explore options for … [Read more...]
Genetics and Genomics: How DNA Studies Are Changing Malaria Vector Control
From bacteria to humans, each cell that makes up every organism on Earth contains the entire genetic code of that particular individual. The code is written in deoxyribonucleic acid, DNA for short, composed of just four types of proteins (called nucleotides) represented by letters, A, T, C and G. This genetic code, known as the genome, may be billions of nucleotides long. The genome, which is … [Read more...]
Introducing a New Look for Malaria.com, and Welcome to Our Diagnostics Issue!
This week we are launching a new look for Malaria.com, the website aimed at bringing together all stakeholders involved in the fight against malaria. While we will continue to provide up-to-date and accurate information about malaria causes, symptoms, treatment, and research, we will now also publish a quarterly online “issue” devoted to a specific topic related to malaria. We hope that these … [Read more...]
The Private Sector and Access to Malaria Diagnostics and Treatment in Uganda
Malaria, a disease that has caused so much loss of human life, has also greatly exemplified goodwill for collaboration in Uganda. The Ugandan government with support from donor communities, research and academia has worked to increase coverage of life-saving interventions to impact upon the burden of malaria; there is improved malaria case management, and more pregnant mothers have access to long … [Read more...]
Too Much of a Good Thing: Why Over-Diagnosis of Malaria Can Be a Big Problem
When the challenges of malaria control are discussed, most people probably think first about the difficulties of preventing mosquito bites, or perhaps how to get treatment to the millions of people that live far from hospitals and clinics. These are clearly enormous obstacles to preventing and treating malaria, but similarly important is the need for accurate diagnosis. Perhaps surprisingly, while … [Read more...]
Notes from the Field: The Importance of Health Extension Workers in Diagnosing and Treating Malaria in Ethiopia
Since 2010, nearly 30,000 health extension workers (HEWs) in Ethiopia have been trained and supported to provide integrated community based case management (iCCM) of malaria, pneumonia, diarrhoea and severe malnutrition. Although HEWs started treating malaria before 2010, diagnostic based treatment of malaria using multiple species RDT was scaled up as part of the iCCM programme. … [Read more...]
My Experience with Malaria: A Personal Account
KAMPALA, UGANDA -- School in Mbarara about 19 years ago, I had several malaria attacks. At the time, the foul smelling Chloroquine was the basic treatment, and many students dreaded taking it. Chloroquine, unlike other conventional drugs, had no sugar coating, and if you tried to swallow and it failed to go down, the impact would be terribly discomforting. One day I religiously took my full … [Read more...]
Improving Malaria Diagnosis Through Online Crowdsourcing: Not Just a (Bio)Game
A team of scientists from UCLA, led by Aydogan Ozcan, describe their new online tool, called BioGames, which they hope will improve malaria diagnosis worldwide: On April 25th, 2014, World Malaria Day, we released an online training game and educational module for malaria diagnosis, where we give each online user hundreds of images per game to assess their ability to identify malaria infected … [Read more...]
Malaria Game
Play now! Test your malaria diagnostic skills (no experience necessary) and help in creating a useful database for scientists and doctors at the same time. This game, designed by researchers at UCLA, was launched on April 25, 2014 (World Malaria Day) as a novel and highly innovative approach to address the challenges of diagnosing malaria. Your efforts will help to create a bank of gold-standard … [Read more...]