Malaria

MOSQUITO-BORNE malaria kills 2 million people each year -- mostly African children -- and infects more than 300 million others. Those numbers are bound to increase because the malaria parasite and mosquitoes are increasingly drug resistant. "Beyond the extraordinary human toll, malaria is one of the greatest barriers to Africa's economic growth, draining national health budgets and deepening poverty," Bill Gates said recently in announcing grants totaling $168 million to fight malaria.

Hundreds of thousands of people die of malaria every year, most of them in Africa. Dr. Eddy C. Agbo wants people to get diagnosed quickly and easily - right in their homes - so they can seek treatment. The barrier to quick and easy diagnoses is that all available tests require blood. His Baltimore company is readying a version that uses urine - just like a pregnancy test. It should hit the market next year. Agbo, chief executive of Fyodor Biotechnologies, grew up in Nigeria and envisions the malaria test as the first in a line of products that could make an impact in developing countries.

Every year, about 1,300 people in the United States learn they have malaria. Most are travelers, and many are blasM-i about malaria. If they had taken antimalarial pills as directed - before, during and after the trip - and followed simple precautions, they would have greatly reduced the risk of getting the mosquito-transmitted disease. Worldwide, malaria affects up to 500 million people a year; 1 million die of the disease annually. It is endemic in more than 100 countries and territories, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta.

Malaria is an enormous and tragic problem - that can be beat. It takes the life of a child every minute in Sub-Saharan Africa, and a million people die from malaria each year. It also stifles economic development, as malaria prevents children from attending school and adults from working. Today is World Malaria Day, and I am pleased to celebrate the lives saved and enriched by recent attention and investments. Not that many years ago, this would be an occasion for hand-wringing and lamenting the many victims of this disease and wishing we could get the world to do more.

NEW YORK -- For the first time in more than four decades, residents of metropolitan New York have contracted malaria from local mosquitoes, federal health officials said yesterday.Three of the cases occurred last July in the New York borough of Queens, startling city health officials who this year, for the first time in recent memory, are regularly trapping the insects and testing them for the disease. Two other cases, to be reported today in the New England Journal of Medicine, were seen in New Jersey in 1991.

Malaria-infected mosquitoes have been found on an uninhabited Montgomery County island in the Potomac River that is a state wildlife refuge, the second time this month that infected mosquitoes have been found on an uninhabited county island. Montgomery County health officials said the mosquitoes were discovered in one of 10 traps on Van Deventer Island, a small tract just south of the site on Selden Island where malaria-infected mosquitoes were discovered last week. Lynn Frank, chief of public health services for Montgomery County, said the mosquitoes were trapped Thursday and tested Friday by researchers from the Bethesda-based Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences.

Dr. David Francis Clyde, a world-renowned malaria expert whose experiences and research in Tanzania led to a greater understanding of the disease, died of pancreatic cancer Tuesday at Gilchrist Center for Hospice Care. He was 77. Born in Meruit, India, the son of a physician, he was sent to England at age 7 to study. He was evacuated from England at the start of World War II and sent to Kansas City, Kan., where he lived with relatives and graduated from high school in 1942. He earned a bachelor's degree from the University of Kansas in 1946 and earned his medical degree from McGill University in 1949.

MAPHUNGWANE, Swaziland -- Men in blue coveralls and white surgical masks began their annual trek into the countryside here last week. Methodically, they sprayed one home after another with a chemical most Americans probably thought disappeared from use long ago: DDT. As villagers looked on, the workers doused inside and outside walls with a fine mist. It is a yearly effort to repel and kill mosquitoes that carry malaria - a disease that kills more than a million people a year, mostly children in sub-Saharan Africa.

The student: Suneel Bhat, 18 School: River Hill High Special achievement: Bhat is a semifinalist in the 2001 Siemens Westinghouse Science and Technology Competition. What he did: Bhat worked with a mentor who cured people of malaria. He tested the blood of those infected for immune responses against the disease. What is he most proud of: His Boy Scout Eagle Award project. He managed construction of a pavilion at Therapeutic Riding Center in Glenwood to aid in the rehabilitation of seizure-disorder patients.

Q. I will be traveling to Kenya and will need to take anti-malaria medication. I've heard conflicting information regarding side effects of Lariam. Some authorities state that this medicine has a low level of side effects. But I have also heard testimonials from people who have had panic attacks after taking this drug. Do you have any information on this? Is there any alternative? A. Lariam (mefloquine) has made headlines because the Army is investigating the drug's possible connection to a series of domestic murders and suicides at Fort Bragg, N.C. The soldiers had taken Lariam to prevent malaria while on active duty.

Malaria remains a worldwide scourge, but scientists at Johns Hopkins Malaria Research Institute believe they have found a way to get the mosquitoes to help stop passing the disease to humans. They have shown that they can genetically engineer Anopheles mosquitoes' immune systems to block transmission of the malaria-causing parasite. Specifically, the scientists engineer the mosquitoes to produce a higher than normal level of an immune system protein called Re12 when they feed on human blood to boost the parasite fighting capabilities.

Strengthening its position as a global center in the fight against malaria, the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health is one of two Baltimore institutions tapped for a five-year, $100 million project to help combat the mosquito-borne disease. The school will work with Catholic Relief Services to use a grant from the U.S. Agency for International Development to procure and promote long-lasting, insecticide-treated bed nets in countries with malaria, a disease that sickens more than 650 million people a year.

Tonight, 3,000 families in sub-Saharan Africa will mourn the deaths of their children. A similar number mourned yesterday; the same number will mourn tomorrow and the next day as drug-resistant strains of malaria claim more lives. Malaria's deadly march has been unrelenting, killing on average 1 million people each year, mostly women and small children, and infecting 500 million in the poor regions of the world. If the mosquito-borne disease is not checked, it could replace AIDS as the No. 1 killer in the developing world.

When the University of Maryland's medical school wanted to raise its profile in the burgeoning field of genomics, officials recruited one of the world's leading experts - and her 60-member team. When the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center saw a hole in its program dealing with public health preparedness and bioterrorism, its officials thought big too - and lured an entire institute of researchers then at the Johns Hopkins University. For others on the hunt for talent, the goal might be young researchers - preferably those with scientific credentials validated by a major grant underwriting their work.

Dr. Peter Agre, the 2003 Nobel Prize winner in chemistry, is returning to the Johns Hopkins University after two years at Duke University to lead Hopkins' high-profile fight against malaria. Agre, 59, will be director of the Malaria Research Institute at the Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Agre said he was returning largely for the malaria challenge. "I'm really excited about this," he said yesterday. "Taking the malaria job is something I've been very eager to do." The return is also a vindication of sorts for Hopkins, whose administration drew criticism for not doing enough to keep Agre when he left for Duke.

Plowe named Hughes medical investigator Dr. Christopher V. Plowe, a professor at the University of Maryland School of Medicine and chief of the malaria section at its Center for Vaccine Development, has been named a 2007 Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) investigator. The Hughes investigators conduct research at their home institutions but become employees of the medical institute, which also pays project expenses. Selected in a nationwide competition, Plowe is one of 15 new appointees, all involved in patient-oriented research.

Global warming could spread infectious diseases, such as malaria and dengue fever, to new regions of the world and speed transmission in areas that are already affected, a new study warns.Warmer temperatures along with more extreme weather -- such as drought and heavy rainfall -- could could have their greatest impact on diseases spread by insects, rodents and other animals.Dr. Jonathan A. Patz, a researcher with the Johns Hopkins School of Hygiene and Public Health, said climate change could cause mosquito-borne illnesses such as malaria and dengue to flourish at higher elevations and in regions that are now too cool.

ILIFI, Kenya -- It's a calamity occurring in slow-motion, something that many see happening but no one is sure how to stop. Here in Africa, where AIDS and tuberculosis rage, doctors are witnessing another health catastrophe in the making, a surge in fatal cases of malaria. The reason? The rise of resistance to anti-malarial drugs. First came the collapse of chloroquine -- one of the wonder drugs of the 20th century -- as a reliable treatment. Now health officials are turning to their second line of defense, a drug called Fansidar.

BUSHUJU, Democratic Republic of Congo -- In this mountaintop village near the hilly eastern border with Rwanda, the vaccination rates are as dismal as the sweeping views are breathtaking. Measles: 28 percent. Diphtheria, tetanus, whooping cough: 22 percent. Tuberculosis: a mere 16 percent. The nurse's assistant who is the sole health provider for Bushuju's 4,500 people listed some reasons for the low rates - besides the general postwar chaos and confusion: He was busy. He had trouble telling the drugs apart.

No one would be less surprised than Rachel Carson to discover that on today's 100th anniversary of her birth she is still stirring controversy. Her 1962 book Silent Spring, which awakened the nation to the dangers of indiscriminate use of pesticides, brought swift retaliation from the chemical industry, including legal threats and personal demonization. Efforts to discredit her rage on. Inadvertently, though, the Oklahoma senator who blocked a proposal by Maryland lawmakers to formally honor Ms. Carson today has simply called greater attention to her role in helping Americans understand how human activity affects their surroundings.