Malaria News and Research

Latest Malaria News and Research

International community must continue to fund efforts to stop spread of infectious diseases

Writing in the Huffington Post's "The Big Push" blog, Dirk Niebel, Germany's federal minister of economic cooperation and development, discusses "why Germany announced last week that it is committing one billion euros over five years to the Global Fund."

31 Jan 2013

Dilaforette receives approval to initiate sevuparin Phase II malaria study in India

Dilaforette, a Karolinska Development portfolio company, today announces that the company has approval from the regulatory authority in India to start a Phase II study with sevuparin in patients with moderate to severe malaria.

30 Jan 2013

Germany commits to providing 1B euros to Global Fund through 2016

"Germany will give one billion euros $1.3 billion to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, the country's minister for economic cooperation and development Dirk Niebel said Thursday" during the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, CNN reports.

28 Jan 2013

Subsidised antimalarial drugs: an interview with Kara Hanson

Artemisinin-based combination therapies (ACTs) are the currently recommended drugs for treating malaria. However, they are expensive, which limits their affordability. This means that people with malaria are likely to buy cheaper, less effective antimalarials such as chloroquine and sulphadoxine-pyrimethamine; or to simply buy painkillers and antipyretics.

25 Jan 2013

'Big Push' campaign revived at World Economic summit

"Last September the Huffington Post, together with the Global Fund [to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria], launched 'The Big Push' campaign, seeking to build on the great progress that has been made in recent years fighting AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria."

24 Jan 2013

Increased resources needed to continue progress lowering child mortality rates

"The last decade has seen extraordinary progress with child mortality rates coming down significantly all over the world. Yet 6.9 million children still die each year, most from preventable causes," Raymond Chambers, founder and co-chair of Malaria No More and the U.N. secretary-general's special envoy for malaria, writes in a Forbes opinion piece, published in conjunction with the Skoll World Forum on Social Entrepreneurship.

24 Jan 2013

BRICS countries sign agreement to collaborate on research, public health efforts

"Health ministers of the group of developing countries known as BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) have signed an agreement to work together on research projects and to reduce the burden of disease," BMJ reports.

23 Jan 2013

International community must harness funds needed to control infectious diseases

"I think the most special thing about our current time is the incredible opportunity that scientific advances have provided in the field of global health, giving us the ability to completely control highly dangerous infectious diseases such as AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria," Mark Dybul, executive director of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, writes in an opinion piece in the Huffington Post's "The Big Push" blog.

23 Jan 2013

Biophysical Society Annual Meeting to highlight innovations in medicine, physics, and more

Honeybee silk-inspired materials; a deconstruction of the Ebola virus; how microbes evolve resistance to antibiotics; and a possible connection between Alzheimer's disease and type II diabetes are just some of the intriguing topics that will be presented at the 57th Annual Meeting of the Biophysical Society (BPS).

22 Jan 2013

Accelerated partnerships critical to ensuring malaria elimination goals

Writing in the Huffington Post's "Impact" blog in advance of the Monitoring & Evaluation Reference Group (MERG) meeting convened by the Roll Back Malaria Partnership and taking place in Namibia this week, Lucy Chesire, executive director and secretary to the board of the TB ACTION Group, interviews Roly Gosling, current head of the Malaria Elimination Initiative at the University of California, San Francisco, "regarding malaria elimination, its importance, and why the Global Fund is critical to achieving that goal worldwide."

19 Jan 2013

New report highlights links between NTDs and socio-economic prosperity

A recently released report, entitled "Social and Economic Impact Review on Neglected Tropical Diseases," highlights links between neglected tropical diseases (NTDs) and socio-economic prosperity.

19 Jan 2013

Researchers identify signaling pathway used by malarial parasites to destroy host cells

One of the most insidious ways that parasitic diseases such as malaria and toxoplasmosis wreak their havoc is by hijacking their host's natural cellular processes, turning self against self.

18 Jan 2013

Japan's 2012 payment to Global Fund its highest in 10 years

"The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria today welcomed the payment by Japan of the second and final tranche of its total 2012 contribution of US$343 million, the highest annual amount that Japan has ever made in 10 years of vigorous support for the Global Fund," a Global Fund press release reports.

17 Jan 2013

Continued investment needed to maintain gains against malaria

In this post in Management Sciences for Health's (MSH) "Global Health Impact" blog, Frederick Hartman, the global technical lead for communicable diseases and epidemic preparedness, and regional portfolio director, East Africa at the Center for Health Services at MSH, examines advances made in malaria control over the past decade, writing, "Malaria is still one of the five leading causes of child under-five mortality worldwide, and deserves continuing attention."

17 Jan 2013

Scientists identify new mechanism for schistosomiasis-bladder cancer connection

About 200 million people across 75 of the poorest countries in the world are now infected by the blood parasite Schistosoma haematobium (S. haematobium). The infection causes severe urogenital disease, but also causes bladder cancer in a number of patients and why this occurs is not clear.

17 Jan 2013

Venture social investment 'could be a new thinking' in development aid

In an opinion piece in The Hill's "Congress Blog," Taufiqur Rahman, an international health consultant and founder of the Center for Implementation Efficiency, explores the concept of "venture social investment or VSI," in which the idea of venture capitalism is used "to reward good ideas or sustainable initiatives by investing limited foreign aid money to gain a much bigger and sustainable impact in developing countries" and creating "a partnership between developed world and low-income countries."

17 Jan 2013

WHO warns of dengue's spread, says progress made against NTDs in new report

"Dengue is the world's fastest-spreading tropical disease and represents a 'pandemic threat,' infecting an estimated 50 million people across all continents, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Wednesday," Reuters reports.

17 Jan 2013

Lancet commentary cautiously optimistic about public health system in Haiti

In this Lancet commentary, John Vertefeuille, Scott Dowell, Jean Domercant and Jordan Tappero of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) examine the state of the public health system in Haiti three years after a 7.0 earthquake struck the country, writing, "Haiti is starting to show that its health services have expanded far beyond those in place before the earthquake occurred."

17 Jan 2013

Gates Foundation official discusses efforts to fight malaria

AllAfrica features an interview with David Brandling-Bennett, deputy director of the malaria program at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, in which he discusses "current tools being used to fight the disease, the prospect for a vaccine, and the hope of new drugs to accelerate progress," according to the news service.

16 Jan 2013

Malaria control: an interview with Dr Jo Lines

Malaria is a tropical, mosquito-borne disease. It is found all over the tropics, in every continent but diminished now a great deal in most of Latin America, most of Asia. Still 90% of the world’s deaths due to malaria – are in Africa and most of them are in young children in Africa.

16 Jan 2013