topnaman | Malaria blog

Why are disease burden estimates important? There are two sets of reasons: 1) technical, e.g. national priority setting etc and 2) political economy of health, e.g. advocacy and visibility, donor influence, etc. Thus, estimates are often quite contentious apart from the methodology used. The practical applications of burden estimation are on the other hand limited. [...]

The paradox of malaria and many tropical diseases is that those most at-risk are also some of the least likely to access, or be able to access, health facilities. Active case detection, the screening of fever cases in the community itself, helps enable case management in such remote or inaccessible areas. But it’s also time and [...]

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 [...]

Millions of people get treated for malaria every year so its important to use an antimalarial which works. Treatment failures result in a prolonged illness for the patient with an increased risk of severe malaria and death. In addition, they contribute to increased malaria transmission. Makes sense right? However, the parasite has an amazing ability [...]

As large scale distributions of insecticide treated bed-nets continue, the selection pressure for insecticide resistance increases. Insecticide resistance, particularly to DDT, helped destroy the malaria control efforts of many countries in the 1960s-70s. Monitoring insecticide resistance is part and parcel of any indoor residual spraying (IRS) program, and is arguably even more important for bed-nets. [...]

The answer is two according to Ministry of Health officials as reported by AllAfrica.com. Now, no one (hopefully) believes only two deaths have occurred and yet the figure is presented as fact. This is either a case of imprecise language on the part of a public health official or bad reporting by the news outlet. [...]

The KEMRI-Oxford group has published a new map of malaria transmission. This is a terrific accomplishment providing a global picture of falciparum malaria and answers some basic questions: where is malaria a risk and how intense is that risk? Using results from 4,278 surveys, the researchers found approximately 2.37 billion people live in areas at [...]