Kenya: Latest groundbreaking research on preventing, controlling and eliminating malaria , a killer disease

•  By  Dickens Wasonga.

Leading research scientists all over the World are set  to present the latest groundbreaking research on preventing, controlling and eliminating malaria , a killer disease and how they have been working to combat  the emerging resistance to drugs, insecticides, among others.

This even as the malaria community celebrates 10 years of progress in driving down the unacceptable number of what happened 50 years ago when donor fatigue and a lack of new tools resulted in a resurgence of malaria incidences  that took roughly a million lives a year in 2000.

The malaria community is responding by racing to hold on to the gains of the last ten years, while at the same time continuing to develop the tools that could help to eliminate and eventually eradicate malaria.

The Sixth Multilateral Initiative on Malaria (MIM) Pan-African Conference, the world’s largest gathering of malaria expert, will be held in Durban, South Africa, from 6-11 October 2013.

Leading scientists from across Africa and around the world who are pushing this groundbreaking research forward, will gather to present their latest findings in the areas of malaria diagnostics, control (including insecticides and mosquito behavior), treatment (drugs),and prevention (including long-lasting insecticide-treated nets, indoor residual spraying and vaccines).

At the conference, subtitled “Moving Towards Malaria Elimination: Investing in Research and Control,” they will be joined by thousands of other experts, national malaria control programme managers, policymakers, health care workers and community members who will highlight new developments and remaining challenges in the fight to defeat malaria once and for all.

Despite unprecedented advances, malaria continues to infect approximately 219 million people around the world each year.

In 2010, it took the lives of an estimated 660,000 people, the vast majority young children in Africa.

History has shown that decrease in support for fighting malaria in areas where significant progress has been made lead to a resurgence of the disease, potentially undoing years of effort and investment and putting millions of lives at risk.

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ONLINE MAPPING SYSTEM HELPS FIGHT MALARIA BY TRACKING MOSQUITO RESISTANCE TO INSECTICIDES USED TO PREVENT MALARIA.

• By Dickens Wasonga,

The first online mapping tool to track insecticide resistance in mosquitoes that cause malaria has been launched .

The interactive website, called IR Mapper (www.irmapper.com), identifies locations in more than 50 malaria-endemic countries where mosquitoes have developed resistance to the insecticides used in bed nets and indoor residual sprays.

IR Mapper incorporates the just-released World Health Organization (WHO) revised criteria for reporting insecticide resistance which is designed to detect it earlier.

With the most comprehensive and up-to-date information, the IR Mapper helps direct which vector control tools should be deployed in areas of high resistance.

Malaria is a deadly disease transmitted to people through infected mosquitoes. It kills a child every 60 seconds yet it is preventable and curable.

Progress has been made against the disease due largely to wide scale use of insecticide-treated bed nets and indoor residual spraying (IRS). But the rapid spread of resistance in malaria-carrying mosquitoes to insecticides used in bed nets and sprays threatens current malaria control efforts.

Resistance among Anopheles malaria vectors has been reported in 64 countries, with parts of Sub-Saharan Africa and India of greatest concern.

“Deployment of the most appropriate insecticide based vector control interventions including nets and IRS needs to be informed by up-to-date data on insecticide resistance in the malaria vector species,” said Dr. Nabie Bayoh, an entomologist at KEMRI/CDC in Kisumu, Kenya. “Until now, data has been scattered throughout different databases and has come from a variety of sources. This has made prompt decision-making difficult. IR Mapper has helped to address this” he added.

IR Mapper consolidates published data on insecticide susceptibility and resistance mechanisms from 1959 to 2012. It includes reports from the President’s Malaria Initiative, National Malaria Control Programmes and other reputable institutes.

Resistance is usually measured by putting mosquitoes in a tube lined with insecticide-treated paper. Mosquitoes land on the paper and absorb the insecticide – some may die and some may survive.

A population is considered susceptible if almost all die. Until recently, resistance was confirmed by survival of more than 20 percent in this test.

The new guidelines from WHO reduced this threshold value to 10 percent, meaning that resistance will be reported earlier. This change is an indication of the concern insecticide resistance is causing globally.

IR Mapper data aligned with the new WHO thresholds is presented in a user-friendly format on interactive maps. The mapping function allows filtering and projection of data based on a set of user-directed criteria.

For instance, users can examine the resistance status of single or multiple Anopheles species to one or more insecticides within their region of interest.

This can be the basis for a “go” or “no go” decision on a particular insecticide for deployment on nets or in sprays. Data can also be viewed for specified time periods, to identify any existing trends in resistance over time.

Data consolidation for IR Mapper was conducted by Vestergaard Frandsen and KEMRI/CDC. The map interface was developed by ESRI Eastern Africa and is powered by JavaScript.

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