By Corey Rathe, Sabrina Barrett, Hannah Hidle, Emma Weimer Malaria is a serious and life-threatening disease – it is also preventable and treatable. So, why does malaria continue to devastate the lives of hundreds of millions each year? Poverty cycles hold much of this responsibility. Disease and suffering are amplified through overwhelming and cyclical traps. Malaria’s burden and most … [Read more...]
Getting to Know Plasmodium knowlesi: The New Parasite on the Block
By Matt Boyce, Gretchen Mohr, and Eva Rest Plasmodium knowlesi, one species of the multiple protozoan parasites that cause malaria, has joined the lineup of human malaria parasites. P. knowlesi was originally known to cause malaria in long-tailed and pig-tailed macaques typically found in Southeast Asia (Figure 1). Only within the last two decades have scientists recognized that P. knowlesi is … [Read more...]
New Research May Lead to Rapid Screening Test for Subclinical Infections
While the global health community has made great strides toward eradicating malaria through prevention and treatment strategies, rapid and inexpensive methods to diagnose submicroscopic malaria in individuals who have no clinical symptoms and undetectable levels of disease-causing parasites in their blood remain an unmet need. With the unexpected discovery of a panel of peptides from several … [Read more...]
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. For many years, World Malaria Day has been a cause for celebration, but not this year. World Health … [Read more...]
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. … [Read more...]
U.S. President’s Malaria Initiative
Despite substantial financial contributions by the United States President’s Malaria Initiative (PMI) since 2006, no studies have carefully assessed how this program may have affected important population-level health outcomes. We utilized multiple publicly available data sources to evaluate the association between introduction of PMI and child mortality rates in sub-Saharan Africa … [Read more...]
Malaria Intervention in Schools Leads to Improvements in Student Performance
New research suggests that the ability of children in Africa to perform well in school could be dramatically improved through basic malaria education and treatment. While less fatal among older children, malaria infections often reduce a child's ability to concentrate, as Henry Ridgwell reports. Source: VOA News … [Read more...]
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 … [Read more...]
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. WHO said it would issue its recommendations in November. It called the development of this possible vaccine a major milestone, noting this is the first time that a malaria vaccine has been reviewed by … [Read more...]
Mosquitoes Smell, Then See Their Target
New research shows how mosquitoes have become so good at finding hosts, like us, for their bloody meals. "I'm sure we've all swatted thousands of mosquitoes in our lifetime but probably haven't thought too much about what their little brains are actually doing," saysMichael Dickinson, who has developed a profound appreciation for these tiny insects after studying them for several years at the … [Read more...]