topnaman | Malaria blog

The African Leaders Malaria Alliance announced during the United Nations general assembly claims it is “the first Head of State-level assembly expressly dedicated to ending deaths from the disease.” Is it just me or does this simply happen every ten years or so? If you also feel a sense of déjà vu it probably stems [...]

The American Journal of Public Health published a terrific account (hat tip: Steven Meshnick) of a bizarre event from the 1950s where:
DDT spraying to control malaria allegedly resulted in cats being poisoned in some areas, which led to increased rodent populations and, in turn, the parachuting of cats into the highlands of the island of [...]

An example of a poor use of facility-based data to claim the anti-malaria impact of interventions:
In 2007 the Millennium Village Project published early results related to agriculture, health, and economic development in their three research villages in Kenya, Ethiopia, and Malawi. I am not commenting on their work as a whole but their malaria claims [...]

About a year and a half ago I briefly discussed a WHO report (see comments here) claiming the success of scale-up of malaria control interventions. Now a group of CDC/ex-CDC scientists have published a superb commentary (Malaria Journal – open access) on the same evaluation and on using facility-based data more broadly (hat tip: Matt [...]