malaria

RECENT POSTS

February 2, 2012 | 3:30 PM | By

Study: Malaria death toll nearly twice the official count, kills many adults

Flickr, ACJ1

A new global estimate of malaria deaths by researchers in Seattle has revealed the death toll is much greater than most experts had thought — and is not, as had been universally assumed, mostly a killer of children.

The study found more than 1.2 million people died from malaria in 2010, nearly twice the official estimate put out by the World Health Organization, and more than a third of the deaths were in adults.

The common wisdom has been that 99 percent of malaria deaths are in young children because adults develop immunity.

“This radically changes the picture,” said Dr. Christopher Murray, lead author of the study and director of the University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME).

Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Health, Science, Chris Murray, Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, malaria, mortality, World Health Organization
December 16, 2011 | 1:13 PM | By

PATH acquires drug company to speed fight on neglected diseases

Seattle-based PATH announced today that it is acquiring the non-profit drug company OneWorld Health.

OneWorld Health, which will continue to operate from its headquarters in San Francisco, was created in 2000 as the first non-profit pharmaceutical company and has been focused from the beginning on creating drugs and vaccines for use in poor countries.

“I don’t think we could have considered trying to partner with a for-profit drug company,” said Hugh Chang, head of special projects at PATH who will act as interim chief of drug development for the PATH-OneWorld Health merger. “That would have been a misalignment in terms of our missions.”

PATH, launched in the late 1970s in Seattle initially focused on women’s health issues, has grown into one of the largest players in the global health arena — due largely to its key role administering and carrying out many well-funded projects sponsored by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

Known for its talent at bringing together public and private partners in innovative ways to solve health problems in poor countries, this is the first time PATH will have a direct role in developing drugs.

In the past, PATH has had to spend a lot of time and effort working to convince drug makers to join in the fight against neglected diseases. Now it is a drug maker. Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Health, Science, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, diarrhea, leischmaniasis, malaria, neglected diseases, OneWorld Health, PATH
October 28, 2011 | 12:08 PM | By

Experts question Gates-Glaxo malaria vaccine report

Flickr, Aya Rosen

Many of the world’s leading vaccine experts and the prestigious British journal Nature are raising questions about the potential efficacy of an experimental malaria vaccine — and the way it is being promoted by scientists supported by the Gates Foundation.

As Nature News’ Declan Butler reports in Malaria vaccine results raise scrutiny:

To judge from last week’s headlines, scientists had made a big breakthrough in the long campaign to create a malaria vaccine ….

Yet several leading vaccine researchers, who are critical of the unusual decision to publish partial trial data, argue that the results raise questions about whether the RTS,S candidate vaccine can actually win approval.

Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Health, Science, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, GlaxoSmithKline, malaria, PATH, vaccine
October 25, 2011 | 12:03 PM | By

Three reasons not to get too excited about the Gates-Glaxo malaria vaccine

Last week, the biggest news out of the Gates Foundation’s Malaria Forum were some interim results of an ongoing test of an experimental malaria vaccine.

Many, if not most, media reported the findings in somewhat hyperbolic fashion as a “major milestone,” a “breakthrough” or “world’s first malaria vaccine.”

Google News on the malaria vaccine

Despite the hype and fanfare, many experts at the Seattle meeting said this experimental vaccine (known as RTS,S) actually so far represents only incremental progress — a scientific achievement which may still turn out to have little practical utility in the real world. They usually only said so privately, given that the Gates Foundation preferred to hear “optimistic” assessments rather than cranky ones.

1. No breakthrough. Let’s first put to bed the claims that these findings represent a major milestone. In fact, the findings largely repeat earlier ‘interim’ results that have continued to find the vaccine protects only half of those immunized — and appears to wane fairly rapidly over time.

So that’s the first reason — a point also made in this (terribly titled) Huffington Post article A vaccine that works only half the time is not the shot in the arm malaria needs. The author, Tido von Schoen-Angerer, director of Médecins Sans Frontières‘ essential medicines campaign says:

But while the latest advance toward the development is scientifically important, there are several reasons to be cautious about the difference this vaccine could make, on the basis of current results.

2. The cost question. The second reason this halfway effective malaria vaccine may not work is cost. The manufacturer GlaxoSmithKline has refused to say what it thinks it will have to charge for the vaccine, other than to say it would be “at cost” plus 5 percent. Neither the PATH Malaria Vaccine Initiative, which is working with GSK on the malaria vaccine trial, or the Gates Foundation (which funds the PATH initiative) will say what price they think is feasible. Many say anything over a dollar might be too much for poor countries.

3. The science. It is promising that researchers have shown a vaccine against malaria is possible. But there’s a lot of other research out there indicating why it may be quite difficult to get a malaria vaccine that can perform as well as most of us expect a vaccine to perform — providing ideally something like 90 percent protection but hopefully not lower than 70 percent. Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Health, Science, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, GlaxoSmithKline, malaria, Medicins Sans Frontieres, PATH, vaccine
October 19, 2011 | 10:50 AM | By

Gates Malaria Forum: Optimism, Urgency and a bit of Kumbaya

Analysis

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation‘s Malaria Forum in Seattle comes to an end today and has certainly lived up to its theme of “Optimism and Urgency.”

Tom Paulson

Bill and Melinda Gates speak at Malaria Forum, with moderator ABC News' Richard Besser

There is legitimate cause for optimism, especially if you look at where the world is today in its efforts to combat this leading killer as compared to where we were a decade ago.

Malaria deaths are down, an experimental vaccine is showing modest success against the parasite and this once-neglected disease and poorly funded field is now big news with a lot more money behind it. I think it’s fair to say the Gates Foundation, which has spent $1.5 billion on (and advocated for) malaria efforts over the past decade, is responsible for much of that transformation.

But the Gates Foundation, and to some extent the entire global health community, has a tendency to only want to talk about good news — to be optimistic. It’s understandable, but that also poses a risk.

“It’s been a bit like singing ‘Kumbaya‘ around the campfire,” said one top malaria researcher. It’s nice to celebrate progress, he said, but the structure of the meeting — which included the Gateses’ call for a ‘re-commitment’ to eradication — somewhat tended to discourage dissent and debate. Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Health, Science, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, malaria, Malaria Forum, Margaret Chan, Robert Newman, World Health Organization
October 17, 2011 | 7:00 AM | By

Gates Foundation confabs, and confounds, on malaria eradication

Flickr, Gustavo

Four years ago, Bill and Melinda Gates shocked, and to some degree dismayed, many in the global health community by calling for the eradication of malaria.

Starting today in Seattle, four years to the day after the Gateses’ made the call for eradication, the world’s richest couple will host the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s second global Malaria Forum aimed at celebrating progress, confronting the remaining challenges and re-committing to eradication.

It’s mostly that last bit, eradication, which tends to stick in some folks’ craw.

At the 2007 meeting, many of the top malaria experts in attendance were critical (privately, for the most part) of the Gateses’ call to eradication. Some said it was irresponsible, or at best naïve, given the sorry history of earlier attempts at eradicating this global killer. I covered the 2007 meeting for the Seattle PI and quoted two leading experts:

“Everyone is in favor of eradicating malaria,” said Dr. Brian Greenwood, a malaria expert at the London School of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene. What has so often bedeviled such good intentions, Greenwood said, is the hazard of raising expectations too high and creating a culture of impatient demand rather than steadfast progress.

“We will have to be extremely careful how this is translated into action,” said Dr. Marcel Tanner, director of the Swiss Tropical Institute in Basel, Switzerland. Unless the international community also is willing to help improve the poor health systems of these countries, Tanner said, the noble goal of eradicating malaria is unlikely to succeed.

“If we don’t do that, though I hesitate to say it, we will surely fail,” Tanner said.

The problem, as Greenwood said, isn’t the sentiment. Everyone would like to see malaria go the way of smallpox. The problem is that if eradication fails, again, many are concerned the more modest but life-saving efforts aimed at controlling the disease will be abandoned, again.

“There are people who are skeptical and we need to listen to them,” said David Brandling-Bennett, head of the malaria program at the Gates Foundation. “But the call for eradication has really created a sea change in the malaria community, getting us all to think about what can be done and what needs to be done.”

Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Health, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Brian Greenwood, David Brandling Bennett, malaria, World Health Organization
September 6, 2011 | 9:00 AM | By

Nets protect against malaria, scientists say (but you already knew that)

Global health number crunchers, led by Seattle’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, have determined after an exhaustive survey of medical and demographic records in 22 sub-Saharan African countries that treated bed nets do protect against malaria.

Duh, you say.

Flickr, 4Cheungs

You might well think it’s a no-brainer to ask if handing out hundreds of millions of insecticide-treated bed nets in sub-Saharan Africa helps to reduce malaria.

But it’s not.

To begin with, there are lots of things that can — and do — reduce the incidence of malaria deaths and illnesses. There is the practice of indoor household spraying of insecticide, which has been increased along with the massive campaign to distribute insecticide-treated nets (ITNs).

There also seems to be a routine ebb-and-flow of malaria severity in the tropics. The disease, like many things in nature, tends to alternate between severe and mild cycles. It’s not clear why.

Flickr, Aya Rosen

And there was this confusing report recently, about the unexplained decline in mosquito populations in parts of Africa. This happened even in places where nobody was spraying or using bed nets.

There’s changes in rainfall patterns and land use that affect mosquito breeding. There are changes in access to malaria drugs (which has also been increased in recent years). And there’s a chronic problem of misdiagnosis of malaria in poor communities lacking labs. Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Science, insecticide-treated nets, Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, malaria, mosquitoes, Stephen Lim
September 2, 2011 | 9:30 AM | By

NPR: The military’s long war on malaria

Richard Knox / NPR

Col. Christian Ockenhouse, director of malaria vaccine research at Walter Reed Army Institute of Research, shows how volunteers are infected with malaria -- by holding their forearms over a container holding five malaria-infected mosquitoes. The container is covered with a mesh, allowing the mosquitoes to bite the volunteers.

As part of NPR’s series of stories about the closing of Walter Reed Army Medical Center is this great look at the military’s long leadership in the scientific battle against malaria.

As NPR’s Richard Knox notes in his report:

Malaria has always been a problem for soldiers. Roman legions had to contend with it. So did George Washington’s troops. Civil War battles were won and lost because of it. And it was a huge problem in the South Pacific during World War II….

The center’s Walter Reed Army Institute of Research, housed for the past decade on its own campus in Maryland, just outside Washington, is one of the world’s premier research centers for infectious diseases.

No other place has done as much to prevent and treat malaria. And certainly, no one has done it so cheaply.

The U.S. Army’s medical center may be closing, but the military’s leading role in malaria research will continue under new reorganization.

Meanwhile, Seattle’s role in the malaria research field — primarily at Seattle Biomed, which has a strong partnership with many scientists at Walter Reed — appears likely to continue to grow.

 

 

FILED UNDER: Science, malaria, research, Walter Reed Army Institute of Research