After years of progress in reducing malaria cases, Rwanda is confronting a surprising resurgence and signs of treatment resistance that have forced officials to revisit vaccine intervention the country once declined.
Sep 16, 2025
0
0
Malaria deaths are likely to rise this year due to sweeping foreign aid cuts, the head of the Global Fund, a Geneva-based NGO locked in the fight against major infectious diseases, warned on Wednesday.
Sep 10, 2025
0
0
Researchers have uncovered new evidence that challenges long-standing beliefs about asymptomatic malaria infections. The study, led by Monash University's Professor Diana Hansen and published in Molecular Systems Biology, ...
Sep 8, 2025
0
0
A relatively new class of insecticide that can be disseminated on something the size of a sheet of paper offers protection for up to a year against mosquitoes that spread malaria, as well as dengue, West Nile, yellow fever, ...
Aug 27, 2025
0
1
Alice Nekesa did not know she was infected with malaria-causing parasites until it was too late. She was in the fourth month of pregnancy last year when she started bleeding, a miscarriage later attributed to untreated malaria ...
Aug 20, 2025
0
0
In a scientific first, researchers have decoded a naturally acquired antibody directly from the blood of a child exposed to malaria. Using advanced mass spectrometry, the team identified an antibody that blocks a critical ...
Aug 18, 2025
0
23
The R21/Matrix-M malaria vaccine generates nearly identical antibodies as those following a natural infection, helping explain why the vaccine confers such strong protection against the earliest life stage of malaria parasites, ...
Aug 11, 2025
0
1
The search for new ways to treat malaria—a disease that kills some 600,000 people a year, most of them children in Sub-Saharan Africa—may have just gotten a boost.
Aug 11, 2025
0
3
A woman in east Pierce County contracted malaria despite not having traveled out of state recently, according to the Tacoma-Pierce County Health Department.
Aug 8, 2025
0
0
New research from The University of Toledo suggests that individuals with anemia may have a significantly higher risk of developing severe complications if they contract malaria. The findings were published this month in ...
Aug 5, 2025
0
0
Malaria is a mosquito-borne infectious disease of humans and other animals caused by eukaryotic protists of the genus Plasmodium. The disease results from the multiplication of Plasmodium parasites within red blood cells, causing symptoms that typically include fever and headache, in severe cases progressing to coma or death. It is widespread in tropical and subtropical regions, including much of Sub-Saharan Africa, Asia, and the Americas.
Five species of Plasmodium can infect and be transmitted by humans. Severe disease is largely caused by Plasmodium falciparum while the disease caused by Plasmodium vivax, Plasmodium ovale, and Plasmodium malariae is generally a milder disease that is rarely fatal. Plasmodium knowlesi is a zoonosis that causes malaria in macaques but can also infect humans.
Malaria transmission can be reduced by preventing mosquito bites by distribution of mosquito nets and insect repellents, or by mosquito-control measures such as spraying insecticides and draining standing water (where mosquitoes breed). Despite a clear need, no vaccine offering a high level of protection currently exists. Efforts to develop one are ongoing. A number of medications are also available to prevent malaria in travelers to malaria-endemic countries (prophylaxis).
A variety of antimalarial medications are available. Severe malaria is treated with intravenous or intramuscular quinine or, since the mid-2000s, the artemisinin derivative artesunate, which is superior to quinine in both children and adults. Resistance has developed to several antimalarial drugs, most notably chloroquine.
There were an estimated 225 million cases of malaria worldwide in 2009. An estimated 655,000 people died from malaria in 2010, a 5% decrease from the 781,000 who died in 2009 according to the World Health Organization's 2011 World Malaria Report, accounting for 2.23% of deaths worldwide. Ninety percent of malaria-related deaths occur in sub-Saharan Africa, with ~60% of deaths being young children under the age of five. Plasmodium falciparum, the most severe form of malaria, is responsible for the vast majority of deaths associated with the disease. Malaria is commonly associated with poverty, and can indeed be a cause of poverty and a major hindrance to economic development.
This text uses material from Wikipedia licensed under CC BY-SA
