Malaria News and Research

Latest Malaria News and Research

U.N. Secretary-General Ban addresses maternal mortality in Nigeria, IDPs in Cote d'Ivoire

As part of a four-country tour, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on Sunday arrived in Nigeria, where he highlighted the importance of fighting maternal and child mortality in the country, which has one of the highest maternal mortality rates in Africa, Agence France-Presse reports.

24 May 2011

IPS examines subsidized malaria drugs in Kenya

Inter Press Service looks at the roll out of the Affordable Medicines Facility-malaria in Kenya. The program, which is managed by the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, makes subsidized malaria medications available through private pharmacies in seven other pilot countries - Cambodia, Ghana, Madagascar, Niger, Nigeria, Tanzania and Uganda.

24 May 2011

Leopoldina recommends improvements for global access to clean drinking water and sanitation to G8 states

Together with the national science academies of the other G8 states, the German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina has prepared two statements for the G8 states in the run-up to the G8 Summit of Heads of State and Government.

21 May 2011

Walter and Eliza Hall Institute researcher selected Fellow of the Royal Society

Internationally recognised malaria researcher Professor Alan Cowman from the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute in Melbourne, Australia, has been elected a Fellow of the Royal Society, the UK's peak academy promoting excellence in science.

21 May 2011

Global Fund disbursed record $3B in 2010, faces more than $1B shortfall for 2011-13, report says

The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria on Thursday in Paris released a report noting that while it disbursed a record $3 billion in 2010, the $1.3 billion shortfall if faces for 2011-2013, "threaten[s] goals to roll back diseases that together claim more than four million lives a year," Agence France-Presse reports.

21 May 2011

Local production of pharmaceuticals could improve access in developing countries, U.N. report says

A U.N. Conference on Trade and Development report issued last week suggested "[l]ocal production of pharmaceuticals in some poor African and Asian countries, such as Ethiopia, Uganda, and Bangladesh, has the potential to improve access to essential drugs for many of the one billion people who live in the world's least developed countries," BMJ News writes.

21 May 2011

New York Times examines DDT use in Uganda

"In the Apac region of Uganda, the United States focused on two conflicting agendas: developing organic farming and eradicating malaria, ultimately affecting the livelihoods of tens of thousands of farmers.

20 May 2011

Serpin-2 molecule may be a perfect target for preventing mosquito's immunity

Mosquitoes are becoming more resistant to current pesticides. That's troubling to Kansas State University biologist Kristin Michel, as it means malaria and other mosquito-borne diseases will continue spreading. A recent grant from the National Institutes of Health may change all that.

18 May 2011

Leucine deprivation triggers apoptosis in melanoma cells

Whitehead Institute researchers have found that depriving human melanoma cells of the essential amino acid leucine can be lethal to the cells, suggesting a possible strategy for therapeutic intervention.

18 May 2011

New research demonstrates how geographic profiling can help combat infectious diseases

Every 30 seconds, infectious diseases such as malaria, HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis kill as many people as Jack the Ripper did in his entire career. New research published in BioMed Central's open access journal International Journal of Health Geographics demonstrates how the mathematical model of geographic profiling, used in the hunt for serial killers, can help combat infectious diseases.

18 May 2011

Bill Gates urges wiser vaccine coverage worldwide to save millions

Tuesday this week, Bill Gates called for strengthened immunization programs against infectious diseases to save 4 million lives by 2015 and 10 million lives by 2020, calling it the best possible investment in global health. He was addressing the annual assembly of the World Health Organization (WHO) in Geneva, attended by health ministers from the U.N. agency's 193 member states.

17 May 2011

AP reports on Global Fund's release of information on corruption, fund responds

After an Associated Press story on Friday reported that the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria "will make public more detailed information about money it has lost to corruption and mismanagement, but won't release other information critics have sought that might have made it possible to calculate how much of the money investigated is lost to corruption, or what percentage of the fund's overall disbursements are misspent".

17 May 2011

Study reveals role of KLF14 regulatory gene in type 2 diabetes

A team of researchers, led by King's College London and the University of Oxford, have found that a gene linked to type 2 diabetes and cholesterol levels is in fact a 'master regulator' gene, which controls the behaviour of other genes found within fat in the body.

16 May 2011

Global health Product Development Partners consortium select GVK BIO as preferred provider

GVK Biosciences, Asia's leading drug discovery research & development organization announced today that it has been selected as a preferred provider to a consortium of 14 global Product Development Partners (PDPs) for clinical services in Asia. GVK BIO is the only partner that is headquartered in India.

16 May 2011

Pre-existing malaria prevents secondary infection by another Plasmodium strain

A team of researchers have found that pre-existing malaria prevents secondary infection by another Plasmodium strain, the parasite responsible for malaria, by restricting iron availability in the liver of the host.

16 May 2011

AP reports on Global Fund commitment to transparency, fund responds

After an Associated Press story on Tuesday that reported the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria's board "is considering scaling back its groundbreaking philosophy of full transparency about how it spends billions of dollars in health care in poor countries"

13 May 2011