Join The Safety Net

Join The Safety Net

Start a Fundraiser

Get Started

Raise Your Voice

Get Started

Become a Corporate Partner

Contact Us Today
Take Action
Donate
By: Matthew Cordell

The Malaria Challenge: Do we shoot for "E" ?

October 17 2007

As I was watching the Gates Malaria Forum's "Town Hall" yesterday evening (entire day's webcast), I was struck by an anecdote told by Brian Greenwood, Professor at London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine:

When Sir Ian McGregor was working in the Gambia, of the children who came to the clinic there with malaria, 80% had a positive blood film; 10 years ago it was 40% of those that had clinical malaria had a positive blood film; last year it was 4 percent.”

Unless I'm misunderstanding him, Greenwood means that, out of diagnosed purely by their symptoms as having malaria ("clinical") , only 4 percent actually had malaria and that this number has dramatically decreased over time. This anecdote drives home the difficulty of dealing with this pervasive disease ($12.5 billion in productivity is lost in African every year due to malaria).

Click here to continue reading this post on my blog, UN Dispatch.

Join Our Network

Sign up now to stay up to date on progress made in the fight to defeat malaria.