USE of insecticides to get rid of mosquitoes is known to be detrimental to the environment and human health. A finding on how larvae of mosquitoes which cause dengue and filariasis can be killed in an eco-friendly way, therefore, holds significance. Researchers at the Annamalai University in Tamil Nadu have …
Describe your study and its findings. From 2006 to 2009 over 70 per cent of the forest staff in the reserve, which lies in a protected area in the Eastern Himalayan global biodiversity hotspot, suffered from malaria. Its treatment cost park managers nearly three per cent of their total budget …
A mystery fever is stalking children in Bihar’s Muzaffarpur district. As many as 47 children succumbed to the disease by June 29. Seventy-nine others, admitted in the two government hospitals in the district, were either undergoing treatment or had been discharged after treatment. The disease has been around in Muzaffarpur …
MOSQUITOES rely on chemical cues such as smell of human breath, sweat and skin to get to a potential prey. This olfactory pathway has spawned several research papers. The latest comes from scientists led by Anandasankar Ray from the University of California, USA. They have discovered chemicals which can prevent …
BACTERIA could be the new hero in the fight against the spread of malaria. Researchers at the John Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in the US have demonstrated how two different bacteria can halt the growth of Plasmodium falciparum, the parasite that causes malaria. It is estimated that the …
HAILED for being a vital ingredient in traditional medicines, cosmetics and detergents, soapnut can now combat mosquito-borne diseases and thus reduce indiscriminate use of harmful insecticides and mosquito repellents. Kernel extracts of soapnut disrupt the activity of enzymes of larvae and pupae and inhibit the growth of Aedes aegypti, a …
BIOLOGISTS have just woken up to the presence of chemicals that can dictate the egg-laying preferences of a mosquito. A whiff of the chemical can make a gravid insect avoid a water pool. Is this the malaria solution the world is waiting for? A team of ecologists at University of …
MALARIA incidence has more than trebled in Mumbai this year even as the civic authorities launched a special drive to control it. Twenty-one persons died and 34,712 contracted malaria since April this year. This is 47 per cent of the total registered malaria cases in Maharashtra, Suresh Shetty, health minister, …
Dengue—a viral disease that can refer to both dengue fever and the more severe dengue hemorrhagic fever (DHF)—swept away records again this past spring as it raged across Brazil, infecting more than 160,000 people and killing more than 100. The reports were similar to those out of Southeast Asia in …
Malaysia is looking to battle dengue fever by releasing mosquitoes that have been genetically engineered to be sterile. Although these efforts have stirred public concern, the country's Academy of Sciences is likely to recommend the strategy to the government within a month. Original Source
Dengue is spreading in the Americas. Incremental changes in climate could help explain the disease's expansion, according to environmental scientists. But some dengue experts have called the link with climate "alarmist' and scientifically unsound. Original Source
A map, which pin-points the location of India's remote villages worst affected by malaria, will now spearhead the country's war against the vector-borne disease. After almost three months of extensive research, using the state-ofthe-art geographic information system, India's National Vector-Borne Disease Control Programme is now armed with the country's first …
For years the global malaria effort has been asking for more resources.Now the field needs to figure out a systematic strategy for spending the money effectively.
With 1.67 million cases of malaria and around 1,000 deaths last year, the government has changed the drug policy and directed states from January this year to introduce the ACT (artesunate and sulpha pyrimethamine) combination as the first line of anti-malarial drug treatment in chloroquine-resistant areas. Dr G S Sonal, …
