India topped countries in the South-East Asia region for the most number of malaria cases and deaths in 2022, according to this report published by the World Health Organization (WHO). Each year, WHO’s World malaria report provides a comprehensive and up-to-date assessment of trends in malaria control and elimination across …
Malaria -- whose incidence dropped from an estimated annual 75 million cases with 0.8 million deaths before Independence to 0.1 million cases with no deaths by 1964 -- showed feverish activity in the '70s. It is stabilising now at about 2 million cases a year. Of late, however, a potentially …
Even as the cerebral malaria epidemic in Rajasthan abates with the onset of winter, NGOs who had first sounded the alarm are trying to ensure that the incident does not slip from the state government's memory, till the next outbreak. The Rajasthan Voluntary Health Association (RVHA), with support from the …
JUST as farmers in the dry districts of western Rajasthan were looking forward to a good harvest following the heaviest Irains in 2 decades earlier this year, a deadly disease - cerebral malaria - ran riot through the villages. All hopes of prosperity were dashed as hundreds of people were …
Good news for those down with malaria. Manuel Patarroyo, a biochemist from Colombia, claims that he is about to develop a vaccine against the disease, one of the oldest scourges of mankind. The vaccine is being tested in tropical countries like Tanzania and Thailand. Reports from Tanzania indicate that Patarroyo's …
THE recent outbreak of falciparum malaria in non-endemic areas in Rajasthan has underscored the link between development projects and the damage they cause to the human environment. Public health experts as well as social workers have pointed out that the fuse for the disease's flare-up lay in the well-meant Indira …
DESPITE efforts to prevent the spread of malaria, the disease strikes as many as 300 to 500 million people each year and claims over a million lives. Not only have the mosquitoes that carry the malaria parasite -- Plasmodium -- become increasingly tolerant of pesticides, the parasite"s defence mechanism also …
IN SEPTEMBER 1993, a new strain of cholera got a grip on India. Within a few weeks, the epidemic floated to the shores of Latin America, the bacteria believed to have been smuggled in via the tainted water of large ballast tanks (which are filled with water to give the …
A WELL-KNOWN quasi-ecumenical argument against the existence of God is the existence of the mosquito: apart from being frustratingly acrobatic and musically demented, the little bugger serves no evident purpose at all in the Almighty's scheme of things. Except one which the Lord's herd can do without: over the millennia, …
A CHINESE herb, Artemisia annua, say scientists, has yielded a wonder drug -- artemether -- which is 3 times more effective than quinine in treating malaria that is resistant to most drugs. They have also found that artemisinin, an oil extracted from the plant, has cut to about 1/5th the …
A NEW rapid dipstick method to detect the presence of the malarial parasite, Plasmodium falciparum, could prove a boon to diagnosticians. The test, which has a sensitivity as high as 95 to 100 per cent, has been successfully tried in Kenya and the US (The Lancet, Vol 343, No 8897). …
ARE forests linked with the spread of malaria? Or, for that matter, do terrain, agricultural practices, water-bodies or ground-water have any bearing on the disease? Now, a computer-based analysis technology -- the Geographical Information System (GIS) -- may provide answers to these complex questions. The Malaria Research Centre (MRC) in …
IN WHAT he called "Colombia's gift to the world", immunologist Manuel Patarroyo has handed over all rights to his synthetic malaria vaccine to the World Health Organisation (WHO), a newsletter of the organisation says. The first scientifically accepted field study of the vaccine, reported in March 1993 in the British …
Dense cinchona and silver oak forests covering 3,000 ha in Valparai in the Annamalai hills will be replaced by tea plantations if the state-run Tamil Nadu Plantation Corporation Ltd (TNPCL) has its way. TNPCL was set up in 1976 to rehabilitate Tamil refugees from tea gardens in Sri Lanka. Since …
WITH THEIR earlier attempts to conquer malaria having fallen through, researchers are now toying with a novel approach -- altering the mosquito's genetic make-up so that it cannot carry the parasite it now transmits to humans. Exterminating mosquitoes to check the spread of malaria has been the main goal of …
NEW STRAINS of diarrhoea, malaria and cholera are spreading rapidly in South Asia, adding to the burden of health care systems that are already stretched to breaking point. Scientists in Bangladesh say the new cholera bacterium, named vibrio non-01, has killed as many as 4,000 of 70,000 victims, mostly residents …
TWO BIOCHEMISTS at the Indian Institute of Science say chloroquine -- the primary drug used to combat malaria -- works against the malarial parasite, Plasmodium falciparum, by inhibiting protein synthesis. "This knowledge will help us understand how the parasite builds up resistance to the drug and it will also open …
A MALARIA vaccine made in Colombia by synthesising protein segments from the malaria parasite is proving promising in field trials, but its efficacy is still low. Vaccine developer Manuel Patarroyo of the National University of Colombia in Bogota reports the vaccine offers adults 38.8 per cent protection against malaria, but …
INDIAN scientists are exploring the possibility that neem could provide a non-toxic AIDS therapy. In Ayurveda and Unani, neem is prescribed for diverse ailments ranging from skin diseases to diabetes. Scientists at the National Institute of Immunology (NII), New Delhi, postulate neem's efficacy is not so much because of its …
THE BRAZILIAN government swung into action recently to evict thousands of gold-panners from a 94,000- sq-kin Yanomami reserve near the Venezuelan border to save the 9,000 members of South America's largest Indian tribe from an outbreak of malaria. Thousands of panners who left the reserve to celebrate Carnival elsewhere are …
SCIENTISTS at the Malaria Research Centre (MRC), New Delhi, say neem oil used in low concentrations effectively repels malaria-carrying mosquitoes that are resistant to pesticides. This is welcome news because malaria has re-emerged as a major public health threat because the malaria-causing microorganism, Plasmodium falciparum, is increasingly resistant to chloroquine …
