topnaman | Malaria blog

I felt the need for a public reminder because it seems to me that people, such as Smith et al. in this Science piece, are forgetting:  Zanzibar’s early success shows what can be achieved in Africa It’s great, but unsurprising, that Zanzibar has reduced malaria using drugs and vector control tools of known effectiveness. Of [...]

A host of information to keep you busy: Looks like RDTs through drug shops won’t work. The same story with subsidized drugs? Mass drug administration with ivermectin to reduce mosquito survival (very novel research with a drug better known for river blindness control) World Malaria Report 2010 – at a glance looks great but do [...]

ECOWAS (the Economic Community of West African States) inaugurates a task force towards this end. I’ll just raise my eyebrow at this one. (Related, via the great TropIKA): Professor Chris Whitty, Head of Research for the UK Department for International Development, considers that malaria elimination is “most popular where it’s least attainable” and “most realistic [...]

The Lancet published a series of eight articles on malaria elimination today – here are my brief summaries: Malaria elimination: worthy, challenging, and just possible The comment from the editors introduces the series and summarizes a few of the pieces. Horton and Das boldly highlight Gates “immense funding power and influence (witness WHO’s instant support)” [...]

Sonia Shah continues her terrific malaria journalism with this piece on elimination. She successfully and succinctly drives home the equity argument (previously discussed here): When public health leaders want to control a disease, they devote the majority of their resources to the areas of greatest need. When their goal is eradication, they must spend their [...]

My critique of strategy and equity in plans discussed so far: Recent dialogue around malaria elimination is laden with implicit assumptions. While the elimination of malaria may be both feasible and equitable in a few areas, globally: 1) the control tools which successfully reduce malaria burden may not be sufficient to interrupt transmission over long [...]

Malaria articles on Karen Grepin’s blog – while only a few malaria dedicated blogs exist, some development and health blogs have a nice collection of posts including this one. Assessment of malaria elimination in Zanzibar (old news) – even with a balanced outlook will it guide future actions – or are those predetermined by who’s [...]

The title of this paper could also be “How to write about malaria programs and operations”. It is among the most astute, careful descriptions of policy and long-term changes in malaria incidence I have seen. The article deserves broad reading as it contains many lessons on research and control for other countries. In the past 20 years, Brazil [...]

An anonymous emailer (many thanks) wrote to me to share news about a successful  microfinance program which improved malaria education. I was impressed with their work, and their efforts at rigorous evaluation. Something bugged me though – the juxtaposition of microfinance and malaria appeared unnatural. Making microfinance available is a worthwhile initiative, but why do [...]

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 [...]