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    WHO scales back it's anti-malaria program...

    WHO says UN efforts to battle malaria off-track
    Wed, Dec 14, 2016 - FATALITIES: The UN health agency failed to meet its goal of cutting malaria cases to ‘near zero’ by last year and is now aiming to cut deaths by at least 90% by 2030
    Malaria remains a nagging problem in Africa and efforts to curb the killer disease are “off-track,” the WHO said in a new report issued yesterday. Despite the billions of US dollars spent on malaria programs, the WHO said too many people are missing out on available resources like medicines and bed nets that protect against mosquitoes that spread the disease. The UN health agency had set a goal of cutting malaria cases to “near zero” by the end of last year. It fell far short, and now is aiming to reduce malaria cases and deaths by at least 90 percent by 2030. “We’re far from having completed the job,” the WHO’s malaria department director Pedro Alonso said. “The hardest is yet to come.” He said gains could be hurt by a lack of funding, which has stagnated in the past six years.

    According to yesterday’s report, there were 212 million new cases of malaria and 429,000 deaths last year, a slight drop from the previous year. However, the figures were based largely on patchy data and modeling; the report said surveillance systems catch fewer than 20 percent of cases. The vast majority cases are in Africa. About 70 percent of deaths were children under five. The WHO said children and pregnant women in Africa now have better access to malaria tests and drugs. However, more than 40 percent of people still do not sleep under an insecticide-treated bed net or have their homes sprayed with insecticides, the main strategies to protect against malaria.


    Meghu Tanti, left, a health assistant, collects blood samples from an female worker suspected to have malaria on the outskirts of Gauhati, India

    Chris Drakeley, director of the malaria center at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, said that even the incremental drop in malaria cases was significant. He said that new approaches to fighting malaria — like giving out medicines to children during high season to prevent infections— were proving effective. Other experts said the WHO should rethink its priorities when it comes to malaria spending. “They’re looking at innovative ideas and investing in new tools like vaccines, but they’re missing the basics,” said Sophie Harman, a public health expert at Queen Mary University in London.

    She said more money should be put into bed nets and health services instead. “Even if you have a new vaccine, how will you even deliver it if there’s no infrastructure?” Harman questioned whether the WHO’s latest 2030 goal was realistic. “It has symbolic meaning that WHO is still committed to this,” she said. “But probably nobody in public health thinks this is really achievable.”

    http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/worl.../14/2003661198

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    Genetically Engineered Vaccine Prevents Malaria in Mice...

    Genetically Engineered Vaccine Prevents Malaria in Mice, Findings Show
    January 04, 2017 - A genetically engineered malaria vaccine has been shown to prevent the disease in mice, researchers say. The findings offer hope of halting the illness in humans, as well as stopping transmission of the mosquito-borne disease.
    Researchers at the Center for Infectious Disease Research at the University of Washington in Seattle, in conjunction with the Fred Hutchison Cancer Research Center, have developed a vaccine that uses the entire malaria-causing parasite — called P. falciparum — to stimulate a protective immune response. Researchers weakened the malaria parasite by knocking out three genes that the organism needs in order to replicate in the human liver and re-emerge in the bloodstream to cause illness. "[Removing] these three genes make sure the parasite cannot develop to the next stage of infection, which occurs in the blood, which causes all of the disease and death associated with malaria," said CIDR’s Stefan Kappe, one of the main authors of the study, published Wednesday in the journal Science Translational Medicine.

    Normally, after the parasite infects the liver, it leaves the organ to infect red blood cells, where billions of disease-causing parasites are produced. In the study, researchers identified the three genes tucked within the parasite's enormous genome that allow it to enter the bloodstream. By knocking out those genes, says Kappe, the altered parasite remained confined to the liver and the immune system began churning out protective antibodies. "So, it infects the liver — that is asymptomatic so that's OK, and it doesn't cause any specific damage to the liver — but it stimulates your immune system [to fight],” Kappe said. “So, [the parasite] stops right there, and we call it 'check in, but it doesn't check out.'"


    Mosquitoes live inside a stock cage in a mosquito laboratory in London

    In a Phase 1 clinical trial testing the vaccine's safety, the neutralized parasite was injected into 10 healthy human volunteers, where it stimulated a strong immune response without causing malaria. Investigators then injected mice with the vaccine containing genetically engineered parasites, and exposed those mice to whole parasites that had not been altered. The vaccine completely protected the animals from malaria, according to researchers. The most recent statistics by the World Health Organization show that an estimated 212 million people are infected with malaria every year, and some 429,000 — mostly children in sub-Saharan Africa — die of the disease.

    Kappe said the experimental vaccine has the potential to prevent transmission, as well. "If you block the parasite in the liver,” he said, “you do not get disease, but you also don't get transmission of the parasite to the next person because the mosquito has to pick up parasite from the bloodstream. But if the parasite can never make it to the bloodstream, it cannot be transmitted to another person." Researchers are preparing to test the experimental vaccine in humans this year to see whether they, like the mice, are protected against malaria when exposed to the whole, unaltered parasite.

    http://www.voanews.com/a/genetically.../3663253.htmlp
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    Zimbabwe Battles New Typhoid Outbreak
    January 04, 2017 — An outbreak of typhoid in Zimbabwe's capital has killed two people and is affecting dozens more, raising fears that the southern African country's water and sanitation problems are far from over.
    Officials say that so far, 126 cases of typhoid have been confirmed in Harare since the start of the rainy season in Zimbabwe about two months ago. There are more than 1,000 other suspected cases nationwide. But Dr. Prosper Chonzi, who heads the Harare health department, said there was no need to panic. "What we are doing is to educate the public on awareness issues to do with typhoid — what it is, how it is spread, how to avoid getting it," Chonzi said. "We are also discouraging people from consuming food from undesignated premises." Harare city crews, he added, were clearing blocked sewer pipes in Mbare township and trying to ensure supplies of fresh water in affected areas.

    Problems persist

    However, a visit to those and other parts of Harare on Wednesday told a different story. Faucets were dry, sewer water could be seen flowing, and some people were using water from open sources like lakes and rivers. Itai Rusike, executive director of the Community Working Group on Health, said President Robert Mugabe's government did not learn much from the 2008-09 rainy season, when an outbreak of cholera killed more than 4,000 people in Zimbabwe. "The fundamental health issues that were supposed to have been attended to from the earlier crisis have not been attended to," Rusike said. "Authorities are taking advantage of the outdated Public Health Act that we are using, enacted in 1924. Public health trends have changed [since then]. This is why you find that it is easier for the city of Harare to pollute our water bodies and pay the fine, [a] very small fine."


    Residents fetch water from unprotected sources in Harare, Zimbabwe, July 28, 2012. The country is now dealing with another outbreak of typhoid fever.

    The pollution he referred to is raw sewer water discharging into rivers, which some people rely on for daily use. Those using the contaminated river can easily contract waterborne diseases such as typhoid and cholera. Typhoid, an infectious bacterial fever, can be treated with antibiotics, but it still kills more than 220,000 people worldwide each year, according to an estimate from 2014 reported by the World Health Organization.

    http://www.voanews.com/a/zimbabwe-ba...k/3663331.html
    Last edited by waltky; 01-05-2017 at 04:17 AM.

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    Still too many African children dying of malaria...

    Death Toll From Malaria Among African Children Called Unacceptably High
    January 05, 2017 | WASHINGTON — Despite advances in the response to malaria, the death toll among children, particularly in Africa, remains unacceptably high, according to a public health expert.
    Kathryn Maitland, a pediatric infectious disease specialist at Imperial College London, is calling on the global community to do more to advance the understanding and treatment of the mosquito-borne, tropical illness. From her outpost in Kenya, Maitland sees the tremendous toll malaria takes on the population in endemic regions in Africa, particularly among young children. It’s been reported that 631,000 people on the continent succumb each year to the disease. Most, says Maitland, are children under the age of five. In a Perspective article in the New England Journal of Medicine, Maitland notes that about 1,200 children in the hardest hit regions die every day. That's one in ten children, even with the best care.

    But, Maitland writes, not all of the news is bad. Over the past ten years, she says, there's been an increase in funding for malaria control efforts, such as the distribution of insecticide-treated bed nets and the widespread introduction of artemisinin combination therapies, the most effective treatments at the moment. As a result, the burden of malaria has been reduced in some parts of the world. But it remains a serious threat in parts of Africa. And Maitland is calling for a greater focus by the research community on the treatment of malaria. “So, a modest improvement in outcome from any one of the complications of severe malaria could have a substantial impact on mortality across Africa,” said Maitland.

    Maitland writes that there has been relatively little progress made in the treatment of malaria, including vaccine development and the best ways to tend to victims of the mosquito-borne illness. She notes that few large-scale clinical trials of malaria treatments have been conducted, and Western assumptions about the best way to manage the disease in children, such as fluid resuscitation therapy, to treat coma and shock, have proven to be ineffective or even harmful. A study led by Maitland showed that the therapy increased the risk of mortality in children with severe malaria by 3 to 4 percent, for reasons that remain unclear. Finally, Maitland worries about the problems with emerging drug resistance, both to the insecticides that are used to treat bed nets, to guard against biting mosquitoes at night, and to the most effective tool in the medical arsenal, artemisinin-based compounds. Resistance to the drug has begun to show up in Cambodia.

    For these reasons, Maitland says the global health and research community needs to elevate malaria on its list of priorities. “You can’t give up on thinking malaria is now solved, that we are on our last phase to sort of controlling this disease. It is still a very huge problem in Africa. We need to do more large trials to actually improve the outcome because even on the best anti-malarial treatment, which is artesunate, the mortality is still 10 percent,” said Maitland. Maitland calls the slow progress in the field “astonishing,” but says high quality, large-scale trials can be done that could generate dramatic improvements in malaria care in Africa and throughout the world.

    http://www.voanews.com/a/death-toll-...h/3665459.html

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    NGO's helping Zimbabwe with typhoid outbreak...

    Aid Groups Help Zimbabwe Fight Typhoid Outbreak
    January 12, 2017 — International aid groups have begun helping Zimbabwe fight an outbreak of typhoid. Some stakeholders say President Robert Mugabe’s government has not been taking the outbreak seriously. Officials say the waterborne disease, which has struck more than 200 people in Harare, killing two, has been detected in other parts of Zimbabwe.
    Health Minister David Parirenyatwa is appealing for international assistance, citing help the country received during a major cholera outbreak in 2008. “When we had cholera, I called the partners and other countries came out. Yes, with typhoid we will welcome partners, particularly the usual partners like UNICEF, MSF and others,” said Parirenyatwa. The British charity Oxfam has responded, supplying water treatment chemicals to typhoid-affected areas, and deploying volunteers to educate people on ways to avoid the disease.


    In Mbare township, the “epicenter” of the current typhoid outbreak, sewer water flows and refuse has gone for days without being collected in Harare, Zimbabwe

    Zimbabwe has been hit hard by waterborne diseases before, most notably a cholera outbreak during the 2008-2009 rainy season that killed 4,000 people. In an interview, Fortune Nyamande, the spokesman for the Zimbabwe Association of Doctors for Human Rights, said the government is
    not fulfilling the right to health enshrined in the country’s constitution. ‘We have not seen tangible action from the Harare city council ," said Nyamanda. " At the central government level, what we have seen is more blame game. People should concentrate more on dealing with typhoid. It is unacceptable for anyone to lose his or her life because of typhoid. They are the diseases of the 1900's.

    That is when cholera and typhoid used to kill people. People should come together and deal with the root cause of typhoid and the nation should move forward.” Typhoid, an infectious bacterial fever, can be treated with antibiotics, but still kills more than 220,000 people worldwide each year. It can be prevented through improved water and sanitation. In Mbare township, the epicenter of the current outbreak, sewer water can be seen flowing on the streets and garbage has gone for days without being collected.


    Residents of Mbare township - navigate through raw sewerage one of the causes of typhoid, a waterborne disease which Zimbabwean authorities are battling to end since the beginning of the rainy season.

    After the outbreak began, authorities banned vendors from selling food in Harare; but, seller Chenai Mananga says vending is not the cause of typhoid. “Garbage is not being collected. Burst sewer pipes are not being repaired. It is junk all over, she said. "If there is junk there will be disease outbreaks. So it is not vendors’ problem.” In some areas, residents say faucets have been dry for days, forcing them to rely on water from open sources like lakes and rivers for daily chores. Those waters are not clean, making it harder to end Zimbabwe’s typhoid outbreak.

    http://www.voanews.com/a/aid-groups-...k/3673826.html

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    Cause of Severe Form of Dengue Fever Found...

    Scientists: Cause of Severe Form of Dengue Fever Found
    January 27, 2017 The cause of a severe form of dengue fever has been identified. The finding offers the possibility of earlier lifesaving care and the development of drugs to treat the tropical illness.
    Experts say one third of the world’s population lives in countries where dengue fever is endemic. It is caused by the bite of a mosquito that harbors the dengue virus. There are four varieties or stereotypes of the virus. The symptoms — fever, body aches and malaise — can be relatively mild the first time a person is infected. A second infection, however, can be life-threatening. It can cause a hemorrhagic form of the disease, leading to severe bleeding and death. The question for scientists is, “why?”

    The findings

    An international team led by Jeffrey Ravetch found that it has to do with protective antibodies that are produced by the body’s immune system when exposed to dengue a second time. “If they are not able to neutralize the viral strains, but not seeing the right structures on the virus or if they are not in a high enough concentration called a titer, then instead of protecting, they actually enhance disease," said Ravetch, head of the molecular genetics and immunology lab at Rockefeller University in New York. "They can do that because the antibodies actually will bind to the virus instead of eliminating the virus," he explained. "They actually aid the virus in infecting cells.” The phenomenon is called antibody-dependent enhancement or ADE.


    A health ministry worker fumigates a house to kill mosquitoes during a campaign against dengue and chikungunya and to prevent Zika infection in Managua, Nicaragua

    Ravetch and an international team of scientists identified a sign or signature of the misdirected antibodies that can lead to hemorrhagic dengue. The finding was published in the journal Science. “So it can be a diagnostic tool," he said. "We know who is at risk. We can see the patients coming in [to the hospital] with dengue fever and say, 'Gee, you’re at risk to develop hemorrhagic fever. You can get really sick.' So, we can take preventive measures. We can put you into a more intensive care-like environment. We can make sure your fluids are controlled. If we can do better care for these patients, you know, waiting for them to come in with shock.” There is currently no treatment for severe dengue, only supportive care.

    Viable vaccines

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    Malaria mosquitoes becoming insecticide-resistant...

    Malaria-carrying Mosquitoes Becoming Resistant to Bed Nets in Southern Africa
    February 02, 2017 | WASHINGTON — Malaria-carrying mosquitoes are becoming resistant to the insecticide used in bed nets to prevent the disease. Researchers say it is important to stay ahead of the resistance to avoid what they are calling a public health catastrophe.
    Bed nets treated with inexpensive pyrethroid insecticides are the main defense against biting, malaria-carrying mosquitoes, and they have significantly cut down on the number of cases. The World Health Organization reports malaria infected an estimated 212 million people in 2015, killing some 429,000 of them. That reflects a 21 percent drop in the incidence of between 2010 and 2015.

    But a new study, published in the journal PLoS Genetics, found that the primary mosquito that harbors the parasite in southern Africa, Anopheles funestus, is rapidly becoming resistant to the insecticide. In at least one country, Mozambique, researchers discovered that 100 percent of A. funestus remained alive after direct exposure to the chemical. Charles Wondji, a mosquito geneticist at the School of Tropical Medicine in Liverpool, England, notes that resistance to pyrethroid insecticides occurred rapidly, in about eight years.

    Resistant gene identified

    Wondji said scientists were able to identify the resistance gene in the mosquito. Speaking with VOA from Cameroon, he said that will give scientists an important tool to monitor the spread of insect resistance throughout the continent. “That form of the gene is now very prevalent in southern Africa with the risk that if we do nothing there's a chance that those control measures won't work against those type of mosquitoes,” he said.


    An Afghan girl sleeps beneath a mosquito net at her home in Kabul, Afghanistan

    By having identified the responsible gene, Wondji said it will be possible to stay ahead of what he calls the “resistance curve” in places where insecticides are starting to fail to kill the mosquitoes. He added other more expensive insecticides can then be deployed to treat the bed nets. He mentioned a compound called PDO that targets the gene, killing the mosquitoes. Wondji said control efforts, such as eliminating mosquito larvae that inhabit standing pools of water, can also be redoubled. Wondji noted other species of malaria-carrying mosquitoes, like Anopheles gambiae, are starting to become resistant to pyrethriods, although that is occurring through a different biological mechanism.

    More studies needed

    Therefore, Wondji, said it's important to study all species of malaria-carrying mosquitoes in order to implement appropriate and successful malaria management strategies. In another just-released study in the journal The Lancet Infectious Diseases, scientists in Thailand have found widespread malaria parasite resistance to artemisinin and combination therapies using artemisinin, considered the gold standard treatment. They say the development threatens global malaria control and eradication efforts.

    http://www.voanews.com/a/malaria-mos...a/3703847.html

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    Malaria vaccines look promising...

    Experimental Vaccines Offer Promise in War on Malaria
    February 16, 2017 | WASHINGTON — Two vaccine candidates have been shown to be effective — in one case, 100 percent effective — in preventing malaria.
    The biotech firm Sanaria Inc. of Rockville, Maryland, developed the vaccines. They prime the immune system against the malaria parasite by introducing live but weakened sporozoites — the earliest spore stage of the parasite — which infected mosquitoes inject into the body, beginning the cycle of disease. Both vaccines target Plasmodium falciparum, the most common and deadly form of the disease. In the more successful of the two trials, carried out in Germany, varying doses of the live-attenuated vaccine, weakened by a chemotherapy agent, were injected into 27 healthy volunteers, while another group of 15 was given a placebo. The participants were then exposed to P. falciparum parasites between eight and 10 weeks after the last vaccine dose.


    Two children stricken with malaria rest at the local hospital in the small village of Walikale, Congo.

    Stephen Hoffman, Sanaria's chief executive and scientific officer, said results from nine of the participants who received the highest vaccine dose surprised the researchers. "We got 100 percent protection against malaria at 10 weeks, 2½ weeks after the last dose of the vaccine," he said. "That is really beginning to look like something quite extraordinary and that's never been done before." The results of the study were published in the journal Nature.

    Reinfection test

    A second trial involving another sporozoite vaccine, weakened by radiation, was carried out in Mali. It tested whether the vaccine prevented reinfection among people who had already been exposed to malaria. In that study, 66 percent of those in the treatment group became reinfected with malaria within six months after they were vaccinated, compared with 93 percent of participants in the placebo group. While far from ideal, Hoffman called the results a good first step, saying, "This is the highest level of efficacy against malaria infection ever seen in a vaccine trial in Africa." The results of that trial were reported simultaneously in the journal The Lancet Infectious Diseases.

    Hoffman thinks Sanaria's vaccines show more promise than others because they use the entire sporozoite to ramp up the immune system. He says other vaccine candidates use only a few P. falciparum proteins — out of some 5,000 — to try to get a good immune response against the malaria parasite, which he believes is a less effective strategy. He says more clinical trials of both vaccines are planned throughout Africa, including in Mali, Burkina Faso, Kenya, Equatorial Guinea and Tanzania. Hoffman hopes Sanaria can develop a product for mass vaccination campaigns that can "immunize the entire population in a geographically defined area so that one can halt transmission and eliminate the parasite." Malaria is a leading global killer, especially among children in sub-Saharan Africa. The World Health Organization estimates there are 214 million cases of malaria each year and that the disease causes 438,000 deaths worldwide.

    http://www.voanews.com/a/vaccines-of...a/3727982.html

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    Dat's why Granny always tellin' Uncle Ferd to plug uppa holes inna walls...

    Study: Better Housing a Powerful Tool for Malaria Prevention
    February 28, 2017 - Improving housing conditions may provide a boost to malaria prevention at a time when other efforts may be losing steam, according to new research.
    As Africa rapidly moves away from traditional mud-and-thatch housing, experts see a chance for architects and urban planners to join the fight against the disease. Bed nets and indoor insecticide spraying have been extremely effective in curtailing malaria. Rates are down by about 40 percent worldwide. But these efforts are not enough. More than 400,000 people died of the disease in 2015, mostly African children, according to the World Health Organization. And mosquitoes are becoming resistant to the insecticides.


    A Sudanese woman suffering from malaria sits inside her makeshift house in Golo, Fashoda county in Upper Nile State

    At the same time, researchers are seeing a transition across Africa. Traditional mud-walled, thatch-roofed housing is being replaced by more modern construction, with concrete walls and metal or tile roofs. Housing is also changing as the continent experiences among the world's fastest rates of urbanization. As these transitions take place, "We have an opportunity to tap into the changes that are ongoing in many parts of Africa in order to build healthier housing," says University of Oxford epidemiologist Lucy Tusting, lead author of the new study in the journal PLOS Medicine.

    Housing as a public health tool

    Most mosquitoes that carry the malaria parasite bite indoors at night. So better-quality housing, with fewer gaps in the walls and ceiling where insects can get in, should help prevent the disease. Using housing as a public health tool against malaria is not a new idea. Screened windows and doors were the very first effective technique used to prevent the disease in the early 20th century. But there hasn't been much research on the subject. Tusting and colleagues looked at health and demographic surveys from 21 countries. They found that children living in modern-construction homes were 9-to-14 percent less likely to have malaria than those living in traditional housing.

    That's similar to the level of protection insecticide-treated bed nets provided. Children sleeping under bed nets had 15-to-16 percent lower odds of malaria infection than those who did not. That's not to diminish the importance of bed nets, Tusting says. As Africa's population expands rapidly, she adds, "We can leverage those changes. But to do so, it's important for health specialists to reach beyond the health sector" and work with architects, urban planners and policymakers to build malaria prevention into the habitat of the continent's growing cities.

    http://www.voanews.com/a/better-hous...n/3743172.html
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    Common Bacteria Might Help Control Disease-Carrying Insects
    February 27, 2017 | WASHINGTON — By using a common bacteria, scientists have figured out a way to potentially sterilize disease-carrying mosquitoes. That could make it possible to control the mosquito that spreads Zika and Dengue.
    Wolbachia is a common bacteria that has the ability to infect up to 70 percent of the world's insect species. It has evolved in different ways — some insects even rely on it for their existence, but in others, it plays a parasitic role and can interfere with the viability of eggs.

    Two genes may hold the key

    Unfortunately, say experts, it doesn't infect many disease-carrying mosquitoes. But researchers may have found a way to use Wolbachia's sterilizing power on mosquitos that carry Dengue, and Zika. "It's kind of been the issue with the Wolbachia field is that all of the insects that are really, really medically relevant don't have their own Wolbachia infection,” said John Bechmann, an entomologist at Yale University in Connecticut. “So that's one reason why this is such an important discovery ... one thing that limited the field is people have always tried to make these fake or non-natural infections that can infect these mosquitoes," said Bechmann. "Now we don't have to do that. We can just put the genes in."

    Researchers at Yale and Vanderbilt University in Tennessee have discovered two genes in Wolbachia that might make Aedes aegypti, the mosquito that carries Zika and Dengue, sterile. Experiments so far have been successfully performed in fruit flies, and researchers are optimistic that it will work in mosquitoes.

    Two strategies outlined

    The scientists reported success in two strategies to stop the spread of Zika and Dengue. One method was to flood the environment with male mosquitos carrying Wolbachia. When infected males and uninfected females mate, Wolbachia kills any eggs the female is carrying. The other approach that worked was introduce male and female mosquitos, both infected with Wolbachia, into a mosquito population.

    Over time, the Wolbachia-infected mosquitos replaced the Zika- and Dengue-infected mosquitos by making them sterile. Two companion articles on the Wolbachia gene discovery were published in the journals Nature and Nature Microbiology. Bechmann says controlling these diseases may one day be as simple as breeding Wolbachia-carrying mosquitos in captivity then releasing into the wild.

    Funding needed

    "The problem has always been figuring out systems that work well in mosquitoes and this is one that's going to be great for that,” said Bechmann, who added that the technology also has the potential to work with Anopheles gambiae, the mosquito that carries malaria. Bechmann and colleagues are in the process of trying to get funding to conduct the research in mosquitoes. Because the mosquitoes are genetically modified, Bechmann says his biggest concern is overcoming regulatory hurdles to permit the release of altered, sterilized mosquitoes.

    http://www.voanews.com/a/common-bact...s/3742554.html

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    Malaria Outbreak in Burundi Reaches Epidemic Proportions...


    Burundi Says Malaria Reaches Epidemic Proportions
    March 14, 2017 - Health experts say more than 700 people have died of malaria so far this year in Burundi, prompting the government to declare the disease an epidemic.
    The determination was based on findings of a survey by Burundian and World Health Organization experts, said Josiane Nijimbere, Burundi’s Minister of Health. She said there have been 1.8 million cases of malaria registered since the beginning of the year — a huge number in a country with a population of less than 11 million.


    The minister attributed the increase of malaria partly to climate change. “There is a strong association between malaria and warm temperatures, which have led to significant increase in malaria cases because of the spread of mosquitoes,” Nijimbere told reporters Monday.



    A woman sits with her child at a health clinic in Bujumbura, Burundi, Apr. 18, 2006. More than one million people die from malaria every year, almost 90 percent are in Africa.



    According to the World Health Organization, some 8.2 million Burundians — 73 percent of the total population — were affected by malaria in 2016. More than 3,800 died. The health minister said government is dispatching doctors and health care providers to villages to care for patients who cannot afford to go to hospitals. The government says it needs at least $31 million to fight the epidemic.


    Aid agencies have warned that Burundi’s ongoing political crisis is hurting the economy and contributing to a humanitarian crisis. The small African country has been in turmoil since President Pierre Nkurunziza ran for a controversial third term in 2015. Some 400,000 Burundians have fled to neighboring countries to escape political violence and reported human rights abuses. A U.N. report last month said the number of people in need of assistance increased from 1.1 million to at least 3 million.


    http://www.voanews.com/a/burundi-malaria/3764920.html

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    'Record-breaking' Progress in Fighting Neglected Tropical Diseases...


    WHO Reports 'Record-breaking' Progress in Fighting Neglected Tropical Diseases
    April 18, 2017 — The World Health Organization said Tuesday that unprecedented progress had been made in tackling many of the world's most disfiguring and disabling neglected tropical diseases over the past 10 years.
    Margaret Chan, WHO director-general, said there has been "record-breaking progress towards bringing ancient scourges like sleeping sickness and elephantiasis to their knees." About 1.5 billion people in 149 countries, down from 1.9 billion in 2010, are affected by neglected tropical diseases (NTD), a group of 18 disorders that disproportionately affect the very poor. In 2007, the WHO and a group of global partners devised a strategy for better tackling and controlling NTDs.



    World Health Organization Director-General Margaret Chan speaks during a news conference on neglected tropical diseases in Geneva


    Five years ago, a group of nongovernmental organizations, private and public partners signed the London Declaration, committing greater support and resources to the elimination or eradication of 10 of the most common NTDs by the end of the decade. "That has been a game changer in the expansion of NTD interventions worldwide," said Dirk Engel, director of the WHO's Department of Control of Neglected Tropical Diseases.


    Meeting on Wednesday


    The WHO's fourth report on neglected tropical diseases was launched to coincide with a one-day meeting Wednesday at the agency's headquarters to take stock of what has been achieved in the fight against NTDs and to explore ways to move the process forward. Engel said health ministers, representatives from pharmaceutical companies, academics, donors and philanthropists "will look at the changing landscape of NTDs" and explore better ways of integrating the fight against these diseases into global health and development. The report described achievements made in controlling the debilitating diseases. For example, it noted that an estimated 1 billion people received 1.5 billion treatments donated by pharmaceutical companies for one or more NTDs in 2015 alone.



    A man with a hand showing symptoms of leishmaniasis waits to be treated at a hospital in Aleppo, Syria


    It cited dramatic successes in efforts to eliminate visceral leishmaniasis, a parasitic, disfiguring disease that attacks the internal organs. "If you get it, it kills. There is no way out," said Engel. The disease is prevalent in Southeast Asia, particularly in Bangladesh, India and Nepal. Engel said a subregional program was organized to provide early treatment with donated medicines and vector control through indoor residual spraying, similar to that used in malaria control. "With those two interventions, you reduce the incidence of visceral leishmaniasis almost to nothing," said Engel. "And the aim was to have less than one case in 10,000 people at the subdistrict level, which is a tough target."



    Ajak Kuol Nyamchiek watches while John Lotiki, a nurse with the Carter Center, bandages blisters on her leg from where a guinea worm is emerging, Abuyong, Sudan


    He noted that the disease had been eliminated in 82 percent of subdistricts in India, 97 percent of subdistricts in Bangladesh, and eliminated entirely in Nepal. "This is a result that we had not anticipated a few years back," he said. While Asia is burdened with the greatest number of NTD cases, Africa has the highest concentration of the diseases. Engel told VOA that between 450,000 and 500,000 people in sub-Saharan Africa were infected by at least one tropical disease — but usually several — at the same time. He said Africa was making excellent progress in controlling neglected tropical diseases. African sleeping sickness has been reduced from 37,000 new cases in 1999 to fewer than 3,000 cases in 2015, and Guinea worm disease has gone down "to only 25 human cases, putting eradication within reach," he said.


    MORE

    See also:


    Frog Substance Shown to Kill Human Flu Viruses
    April 18, 2017 - A frog found in India secretes a substance that has been shown to be highly effective at killing influenza viruses.
    Researchers at Emory University in Atlanta say the secreted peptide — a subunit of a protein chain — kills dozens of flu strains that plague humans. It is effective against H1 viruses, including ones that could cause pandemics. Unlike humans, frogs don't have an immune system that is capable of protecting them against pathogens like viruses and bacteria. But they do produce a slimy mucus that does the job for them. Researchers at Emory screened 32 peptides derived from the mucus of the frog, called Bahuvistara, and found one that was effective against all H1 viruses. The frog is found in the southern Indian province of Kerala.



    An image of H1N1 influenza virus from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention



    Joshy Jacob, a professor of microbiology and immunology at Emory's vaccine center and senior author of the study, describing the peptide in the journal Immunity. He and his colleagues administered the peptide to mice and then exposed them to H1 viruses. He said it protected the animals from infection. "The beauty of this peptide is that it directly kills the virus. It's virucidal. So if you put the peptide and the virus together, it actually destroys the virus," Jacob said. The researchers named the peptide urumin, after a sword blade that snaps and bends like a whip. Jacob said the mucus is collected from the frog after exposing it to a mild electric current, which makes the amphibians secrete the antiviral agent.


    Three dozen peptides


    After identifying the more than three dozen immune peptides in the mucus, the protein building blocks were made synthetically in the lab. Four emerged as antiviral candidates. But one, urumin, killed all H1 viruses. Jacob said an flu-fighting peptide could be especially useful when vaccines are not available or when circulating viral strains become resistant to current drugs.


    He said one of the next challenges would be turning the effective peptide into a pill or injection to protect humans from viruses. "It's like when you get a headache, you take a Motrin [a painkiller]. [The peptide] doesn't keep you from getting [the flu] again, but it kills the virus. It's like taking an antibiotic for bacterial infection. You take this for a flu infection," Jacob said. Jacob said the peptide was not effective against seasonal flu viruses that mutate rapidly. But researchers plan on testing more of the frog-derived peptides to try to find others that work against other types of influenza virus.


    http://www.voanews.com/a/frog-substa...s/3815853.html

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