On World Malaria Day (April 25), the U.N. "warned ... that malaria maintains its impact on less developed countries, mainly in Africa, where millions of people lack needed attention," and in a message marking the day, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon "urged political leaders and health authorities of states where malaria is endemic to keep their commitment to achieve universal access to prevention and treatment of malaria".
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Testifying before Congress this week, CDC Director Thomas Frieden "said the challenge in the fight against malaria, which in Africa alone kills one child every minute, is staying one step ahead of the malaria parasite" and "cited the need for better public health surveillance, and urged Congress to fund better detection tools".
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On World Malaria Day, 25 April, WHO recognizes significant accomplishments in preventing and controlling malaria, including in high-burden countries in sub-Saharan Africa, but highlights the threat of antimalarial drug resistance in south-east Asia's Greater Mekong subregion, where an emergency response is now being launched.
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"This week, PATH and our partners celebrated the official launch of the production line for a new synthetic version of artemisinin, the key ingredient for the gold-standard malaria treatment -- one that plays a major role in protecting the lives of children and adults worldwide," PATH President and CEO Steve Davis writes in the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation's "Impatient Optimists" blog.
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"On Thursday, the founder of Amyris Biotech triumphantly announced production of 70 million doses of the anti-malarial compound artemisinin," Jim Thomas, research program director for ETC group, a technology watchdog that works with farmers' organizations, writes in The Guardian's "Poverty Matters" blog.
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"U.S. scientists on Wednesday said they had used baker's yeast to make a key ingredient of malaria drugs, a feat that could iron out fluctuations in supply caused by sourcing the chemical from a Chinese herb," Artemisia annua, Agence France-Presse reports (4/10).
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Twelve years after a breakthrough discovery in his University of California, Berkeley, laboratory, professor of chemical engineering Jay Keasling is seeing his dream come true.
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New research has revealed that immature malaria parasites are more resistant to treatment with key antimalarial drugs than older parasites, a finding that could lead to more effective treatments for a disease that kills one person every minute and is developing resistance to drugs at an alarming rate.
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"Significant investment in malaria research has yielded effective interventions such as insecticide treated nets, indoor residual spraying and artemisinin-based combination therapies to control the disease, but its burden continues to be felt among the poorest," George Okello, a research fellow at the Kenya Medical Research Institute, and Nina Cromeyer Dieke, communications manager for the Global Atlas of Helminth Infections based at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, write in an opinion piece in the Guardian's "Global Development Professionals Network."
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Artemisinin-based combination therapies (ACTs) are the currently recommended drugs for treating malaria. However, they are expensive, which limits their affordability. This means that people with malaria are likely to buy cheaper, less effective antimalarials such as chloroquine and sulphadoxine-pyrimethamine; or to simply buy painkillers and antipyretics.
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Malaria brings misery and death to millions in the developing world each year, and fighting it keeps medical researchers up at night because the mosquito-borne parasite Plasmodium falciparum, which causes the deadliest form of the disease, has developed resistance to every drug thrown at it. Resistance has cut short the useful life of nearly every therapy tried so far, experts say.
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As part of its continuing coverage of malaria, NPR's "Shots" blog features a story on counterfeit anti-malarial drugs, which "are among the most popular drugs to fake." According to the blog, "These faux pharmaceuticals are particularly dangerous because malaria can kill a person in a matter of days," and, if the drugs contain only a small amount of the real drug, they can contribute to the development of drug-resistant malaria parasites.
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"The remarkable gains made in the treatment of malaria over the past decade are under threat because of insufficient increases in funding over the past two years, according to an annual progress report by the World Health Organization," the Guardian reports.
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University of Maryland School of Medicine researchers have launched groundbreaking research into the spread of potentially deadly drug-resistant malaria in the developing Southeast Asian nation of Myanmar, also known as Burma.
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Malaria is an infection caused by a parasite called plasmodium, which is transmitted from person to person by females of some species of mosquito. It is primarily a disease of tropical countries.
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BBC News examines "a worrying drop in the effectiveness of the artemisinin-based drugs" against malaria along the Cambodian-Thai border, and how clinics are attempting to combat the trend by offering monetary incentives to patients to complete treatment regimens.
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The "grand experiment" of the Affordable Medicines Facility-malaria (AMFm) -- a pilot program that aims to get artemisinin-based combination therapies (ACTs) into rural areas of several African nations -- "seems likely to end, its successes underrated and potential improvements not yet explored," a Nature editorial says.
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The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, part of the National Institutes of Health, has awarded a five-year contract of up to $19.4 million, depending on contract options exercised, to establish the Malaria Host-Pathogen Interaction Center (MaHPIC).
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The Board of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria on Thursday announced it will "integrate" the Affordable Medicines Facility-malaria (AMFm), implemented in 2010 as a pilot program to provide low-cost artemisinin-based combination therapies (ACTs) in poor and rural areas, "into its existing core system of providing grants to countries to purchase drugs, bed nets and other malaria-control measures," Nature News Blog reports.
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The Affordable Medicines Facility-malaria began as a pilot program in 2010 to "provide a 'co-payment' to the manufacturers of [artemisinin-based combination therapies (ACTs)], thereby allowing commercial wholesalers and private or government health services to purchase the drugs at a fraction of the already low negotiated price," Kenneth Arrow, a Nobel laureate in economic sciences in 1972 and an emeritus professor of economics at Stanford University, writes in a New York Times opinion piece.
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