Zabibu Athumani and her son Abirai Mbaraka Sultani rest under an insecticide-treated bed net at their home. (Bagamoyo, Tanzania, 2011).
Gates Foundation
In January, the New York Times highlighted how insecticide treated nets meant to protect people from mosquitoes and malaria are now being used to haul fish in Africa. Among those using these nets to catch…
Ebola isn’t the only disease we need to worry about.
Jason Reed/Reuters
Some experts worry that the Ebola crisis is diverting attention and resources away from neglected diseases with a substantially larger disease incidence.
Malaria is frequently cited as one of the biggest killers of young children in Africa. Yet rarely, do we hear about its impact on working-age adults and the economic impact of the disease. While malaria-related…
Malaria testing could soon be done in the cloud.
US Army Africa
Remote diagnostics is an emerging field that allows healthcare workers to perform tests on patient samples in the field and to get results interpreted by medical experts remotely. This is a groundbreaking…
The face of malaria - diagnosed with a severe case of malaria.
Flickr/Gates Foundation
A new drug for malaria could be developed after a way has been found to kill the parasite that causes the disease. Malaria remains one of the world’s top three single-cause infectious diseases and is caused…
Every year malaria kills more than 600,000, which is a little less than the population of Bhutan. There are some simple solutions to control the disease, but keeping the numbers of mosquitoes with malarial…
Australian travellers are increasingly returning home infected with mosquito-borne diseases.
Flickr:hkroeger28
Football fever may not be the only thing spreading when hundreds of thousands of sports fans converge on Brazil for the FIFA World Cup this June and July. Mass events such as the Olympic and Commonwealth…
Scientists in France have found how the genes of the malaria parasite adapt to become resistant to artemisinin, one of the most effective remaining antimalarial drugs. Their discovery exposes a serious…
Controlling malaria is a war being waged on many fronts. Mosquito nets and coils repel mosquitoes from their human feast; vaccines protect us from the inside and environmental measures clear the stagnant…
Matthew Todd was honoured for his work on the Open Source Malaria project.
ASAP Awards
Dr Matthew Todd – leader of the Open Source Malaria consortium in Sydney, senior lecturer at the University of Sydney and Conversation author – was awarded one of three Accelerating Science Awards in Washington…
Malaria prevention is going beyond the mosquito net.
Gates Foundation
The announcement that GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) aims to register a malaria vaccine came on the same day Peter Higgs and Francois Englert were awarded the Nobel prize in physics for predicting the existence…
Lucy Tusting, London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine
As a young civil engineer in the 1950s, my grandfather was posted to Khartoum in the Sudan, tasked with helping to build a new water supply, drains and sewers for the city. Over the years, this system…
Several vaccines for malaria have been developed over the past few decades, but none offer complete protection. Now, for the first time, US researchers have developed a vaccine that protects 100% of those…
Asylum seeker children who have tried to get to Australia by boat since the PNG agreement was announced will be sent to Manus Island.
“You cannot send children aged under seven to Manus Island because of the issues of inoculation - you can’t do it.” - Opposition immigration spokesman Scott Morrison, press conference, 21 July. Scott Morrison…
Falciparum malaria parasite carried by mosquitoes might be cerebral but has it been outsmarted?
PA/Danny Lawson
Chris Moxon, Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine
Cerebral malaria, or malaria of the brain, means being deeply unconscious with perpetual cycles of seizures and spasms. It can cause death, or often disability. About 600,000 people suffer this terrible…
Malaria hits rural dwellers in poor countries the hardest. Those bitten by the wrong mosquito often do not know for many days that they have contracted malaria. Some have little or no access to doctors…
Mosquito nets can protect at-risk children from malaria.
Flickr: YoHandy
About half of the world’s population are at risk of contracting malaria. In 2011, there were 26m reported cases and more than 100,000 deaths. Children are especially vulnerable though the disease is both…
Bill Gates is in Australia as part of efforts to secure funds for global health initiatives, particularly polio and malaria eradication.
Gates Foundation
Global health campaigner Bill Gates is in Sydney today to lobby prime minister Julia Gillard to spend more money on global health, particularly the fight against malaria and polio. But while money may…
Principal Medical Scientist and Head of Laboratory for Antimalarial Resistance Monitoring and Malaria Operational Research, National Institute for Communicable Diseases