Word: malaria
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Malaria strikes about 250 million people around the world every year and kills nearly a million. The mosquito-borne parasite is the third deadliest infectious disease in the world, after HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis, and most of its victims are children. With the help of tens of millions of dollars from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and various governments, the global health community - from biochemical engineers in Berkeley, Calif., to village volunteers in Battambang, Cambodia - is racing to eliminate the increasingly resistant parasite before it's too late. This week, the Global Fund signed off on a $220 million-plus...
...Diseases have been stamped out before. The last case of naturally occurring smallpox was in 1977, after the disease killed about 300 million people earlier in the century. But finding a cure for malaria has proven more elusive. Artemisinin, which is still considered the most effective malaria treatment today, is derived from sweet wormwood, an herb native to Asia. It's been used to fight the disease in China for more than 2,000 years, but it wasn't until 1965 that the cure was isolated and purified by the Chinese military after its soldiers started falling ill during...
...enforce. Since the partner drug - typically mefloquine in Southeast Asia - has more side effects, some people take only the artemisinin pills. This may work to clear out the parasite for one person, but it leads to rapid drug resistance when the practice is widespread. Globally, only 3% of malaria patients receive the proper artemisinin combination therapy. (Read about the search for a vaccine...
...year, hundreds of migrant workers arrive at makeshift sapphire and ruby mines near Pailin, Cambodia, risking their lives to unearth gems in the landmine-ridden territory. Soon, however, they could be the ones to put millions of others at risk. On the Thai-Cambodian border, a rogue strain of malaria has started to resist artemisinin, the only remaining effective drug in the world's arsenal against malaria's most deadly strain, Plasmodium falciparum. For six decades, malaria drugs like chloroquine and mefloquine have fallen impotent in this Southeast Asian border area, allowing stronger strains to spread to Burma, India...
...cool at night. It is home to dozens of landowners - some of whom snapped up their lots before Kenya won independence from Britain in 1963 - as well as Africa's most fabled animals: lions, leopards and elephants. This, and the fact that there's no malaria, makes Laikipia a popular destination for tourists looking to get off the beaten track. Yet the emptiness also appeals to the British army, which has been training in the region for decades. (See pictures of the crisis in Kenya after the 2008 election...