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Ongoing challenges in the management of malaria

This article gives an overview of some of the ongoing challenges that are faced in the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of malaria. Malaria causes approximately 881,000 deaths every year, with nine out of ten deaths occurring in sub-Saharan Africa. In addition to the human burden of malaria, the...

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Autor principal: Kokwaro, Gilbert
Formato: Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2009
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2760237/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19818169
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1475-2875-8-S1-S2
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author Kokwaro, Gilbert
author_facet Kokwaro, Gilbert
author_sort Kokwaro, Gilbert
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description This article gives an overview of some of the ongoing challenges that are faced in the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of malaria. Malaria causes approximately 881,000 deaths every year, with nine out of ten deaths occurring in sub-Saharan Africa. In addition to the human burden of malaria, the economic burden is vast. It is thought to cost African countries more than US$12 billion every year in direct losses. However, great progress in malaria control has been made in some highly endemic countries. Vector control is assuming a new importance with the significant reductions in malaria burden achieved using combined malaria control interventions in countries such as Zanzibar, Zambia and Rwanda. The proportion of patients treated for malaria who have a confirmed diagnosis is low in Africa compared with other regions of the world, with the result that anti-malarials could be used to treat patients without malaria, especially in areas where progress has been made in reducing the malaria burden and malaria epidemiology is changing. Inappropriate administration of anti-malarials could contribute to the spread of resistance and incurs unnecessary costs. Parasite resistance to almost all commonly used anti-malarials has been observed in the most lethal parasite species, Plasmodium falciparum. This has presented a major barrier to successful disease management in malaria-endemic areas. ACT (artemisinin-based combination therapy) has made a significant contribution to malaria control and to reducing disease transmission through reducing gametocyte carriage. Administering ACT to infants and small children can be difficult and time consuming. Specially formulating anti-malarials for this vulnerable population is vital to ease administration and help ensure that an accurate dose is received. Education of healthworkers and communities about malaria prevention, diagnosis and treatment is a vital component of effective case management, especially as diagnostic policies change. Preventing resistance emerging to both ACT and insecticides used in vector control remains an ongoing challenge in an era of changing malaria epidemiology.
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spelling pubmed-27602372009-10-13 Ongoing challenges in the management of malaria Kokwaro, Gilbert Malar J Review This article gives an overview of some of the ongoing challenges that are faced in the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of malaria. Malaria causes approximately 881,000 deaths every year, with nine out of ten deaths occurring in sub-Saharan Africa. In addition to the human burden of malaria, the economic burden is vast. It is thought to cost African countries more than US$12 billion every year in direct losses. However, great progress in malaria control has been made in some highly endemic countries. Vector control is assuming a new importance with the significant reductions in malaria burden achieved using combined malaria control interventions in countries such as Zanzibar, Zambia and Rwanda. The proportion of patients treated for malaria who have a confirmed diagnosis is low in Africa compared with other regions of the world, with the result that anti-malarials could be used to treat patients without malaria, especially in areas where progress has been made in reducing the malaria burden and malaria epidemiology is changing. Inappropriate administration of anti-malarials could contribute to the spread of resistance and incurs unnecessary costs. Parasite resistance to almost all commonly used anti-malarials has been observed in the most lethal parasite species, Plasmodium falciparum. This has presented a major barrier to successful disease management in malaria-endemic areas. ACT (artemisinin-based combination therapy) has made a significant contribution to malaria control and to reducing disease transmission through reducing gametocyte carriage. Administering ACT to infants and small children can be difficult and time consuming. Specially formulating anti-malarials for this vulnerable population is vital to ease administration and help ensure that an accurate dose is received. Education of healthworkers and communities about malaria prevention, diagnosis and treatment is a vital component of effective case management, especially as diagnostic policies change. Preventing resistance emerging to both ACT and insecticides used in vector control remains an ongoing challenge in an era of changing malaria epidemiology. BioMed Central 2009-10-12 /pmc/articles/PMC2760237/ /pubmed/19818169 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1475-2875-8-S1-S2 Text en Copyright © 2009 Kokwaro; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0 This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License ( (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0) ), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
spellingShingle Review
Kokwaro, Gilbert
Ongoing challenges in the management of malaria
title Ongoing challenges in the management of malaria
title_full Ongoing challenges in the management of malaria
title_fullStr Ongoing challenges in the management of malaria
title_full_unstemmed Ongoing challenges in the management of malaria
title_short Ongoing challenges in the management of malaria
title_sort ongoing challenges in the management of malaria
topic Review
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2760237/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19818169
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1475-2875-8-S1-S2
work_keys_str_mv AT kokwarogilbert ongoingchallengesinthemanagementofmalaria