Malaria

Medicines for Malaria Venture (MMV) - A nonprofit foundation created to discover, develop and deliver new antimalarial drugs through effective public-private partnerships. Their vision is a world in which affordable drugs will help eliminate the devastating effects of malaria and help protect the children, pregnant women, and vulnerable workers of developing countries from this terrible disease.

INDEPTH is an International Network of field sites with continuous Demographic Evaluation of Populations and Their Health in developing countries. At a meeting in Dar es Salaam in 1998, members of field sites based on demographic and health surveillance convened to establish the INDEPTH network. Seventeen field sites, drawn from 13 countries in Africa and Asia, participated in this constituting meeting.

This site includes GIS data to assist in mapping the risk of malaria in the Southern African region.

People in low-resource countries who are ill with multidrug-resistant TB (MDR-TB) will get a faster diagnosis in two days, not the standard two to three months and appropriate treatment thanks to two new initiatives unveiled today by WHO, the Stop TB Partnership, UNITAID and the Foundation for Innovative New Diagnostics (FIND).

KwaZulu-Natal seems to be winning the battle against malaria in the province, with only about 1 000 cases reported in the province in the past malarial season.

The African Malaria Network Trust (AMANET) and researchers at the Malaria Research Training Center (MRTC), University of Bamako in Mali have launched a large scale study to evaluate the candidate malaria vaccine merozoite surface protein-3 long synthetic peptide (MSP3-LSP).

Fake and substandard drugs in Africa by immoral medical companies is a serious worry. Malaria continues to be a serious concern. It affects more than 100 countries and about 40percent of the worlds population. It causes between 300 and 500 million infections and about a million deaths each year. It is estimated that malaria kills a child every 30 seconds in spite of the disease being entirely preventable and curable. At the eighth World Health Assembly meeting in 1955, it was resolved to begin a worldwide eradication campaign of malaria. Though the campaign was eventually abandoned and considered a failure, it registered resounding successes in eradicating malaria from large regions across the globe. The successful application of insecticides and the effectiveness of antimalarial treatments formed the cornerstones of the programme.

Researchers have provided the first evidence that malaria parasite development in the always-changing environment of a human host is strikingly different to how it develops in the more consistent surroundings of a laboratory.

African countries were making vital headway in preventing child malaria, thanks to wider distribution of insecticide-treated mosquito nets and the procurement of new drugs, a UN-backed report said yesterday.

The Acting Minister of Health Mr Jeff Radebe is leading a South African delegation to represent the interests of the country at the 60th World Health Assembly (WHA) being convened in Geneva, Switzerland 14-23 May.