Progress against malaria in large parts of Africa has stalled despite recent progress, according to a major study published last night.
Researchers called for a new approach to the areas of west and central Africa which continue to have high transmission rates of disease and suffer from chronic poverty.
The Wellcome Trust released its findings based on 115 years of collection of data about the disease in the continent. It includes details from nearly eight million blood samples from 43 countries.
The research, reported in Nature, found that at the beginning of the 20th century, 40% of African children were infected with P.falciparum – and that in this decade the prevalence rate among children under the age of ten is 24%.
Researcher Professor Bob Snow, from Oxford University, UK, said: “This is a real wake-up call, we need new drugs and insecticides or the gains we’ve seen will be lost.
“While there has been substantial progress in malaria reduction in Africa, on average one in four children still carry the malaria parasite in Africa and there are areas of the continent that haven’t changed much over the last three decades.
“Focusing just on elimination at the margins of Southern Africa, runs the risk that high burden countries in Africa get ignored and left behind.”
He added: “If insecticide and drug resistance becomes established, or excessive rainfall hits Africa again, malaria will revert in large parts of Africa to the high levels we saw in the 1990s.”
Nature 11 October 2017 [abstract]
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