The world’s first mass vaccination program against malaria, announced this week, is set to prevent millions of children from catching malaria and thousands dying from this debilitating disease. The World Health Organization (WHO) has recommended widespread use of the RTS,S/AS01 (Mosquirix) vaccine in young children who are most at risk of malaria in Africa. Malaria […]
The Ohangwena region this week launched the indoor residual spraying for preventing malaria. The campaign was launched by governor Walde Ndevashiya and regional health director John Hango. The region has been battling malaria over the years, with 145 cases reported in 2012. The number of new cases went up in 2017 to 5 440 before […]
The World Health Organization (WHO) is recommending widespread use of the world’s first malaria vaccine, in what the UN health agency’s chief described on Wednesday as “an historic day” for the decades-long battle against the deadly disease. The vaccine is geared towards children, in sub-Saharan Africa and other regions with moderate to high transmission. The […]
The World Health Organization (WHO) is recommending widespread use of the RTS,S/AS01 (RTS,S) malaria vaccine among children in sub-Saharan Africa and in other regions with moderate to high P. falciparum malaria transmission. The recommendation is based on results from an ongoing pilot programme in Ghana, Kenya and Malawi that has reached more than 800 000 […]
Scientists have found evidence of a resistant form of malaria in Uganda, a worrying sign that the top drug used against the parasitic disease could ultimately be rendered useless without more action to stop its spread. Doctors suggested that instead of the standard approach, where one or two other drugs are used in combination with […]
BioNTech wants to continue the success of its COVID-19 vaccine and use mRNA technology to develop shots against malaria. But is production in Africa realistic? There’s a ray of hope in the fight against tropical diseases: German pharmaceutical company BioNTech said it wants to develop vaccines against malaria and tuberculosis. Clinical trials are expected to […]
In the midst of the tragedy and turmoil caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, it’s gratifying to see work continuing in Africa to find new ways of fighting malaria, a very old disease that has been a formidable foe for thousands of years and still kills 400,000 people every year, most of them African children under […]
THE government in collaboration with the country’s medical research centres, National Malaria Control Programme (NMCP) and other stakeholders’ reiterated its commitment to end malaria infection by 2030. During a recent oneday meeting in Tanga which also involved officials from the Ministry of Health, Community Development, Gender, Elderly and Children, as well as the President Office- […]
It has been said that malaria breeds poverty, and poverty breeds malaria. This is the reality in many parts of sub-Saharan Africa, where after decades of control initiatives there were still some 384,000 deaths and 188 million malaria cases in 2019. Malaria prevention in African countries heavily depends on using insecticide treated bed nets and […]
The government has urged citizens to brace for another outbreak of malaria following a surge of cases last season. Responding a question in the National Assembly recently, Deputy Minister of Health and Child Care Dr John Mangwiro said the government was doing awareness programmes on how to prevent and control the spread of malaria. “We […]
Malaria — related deaths and infections have been halved under the auspices of Malaria Consortium’s Malaria Action Programme for Districts (MAPD). The five-year programme, which started in 2017, covered 53 districts in conjunction with stakeholders such as District Health Teams (DHT). Speaking at the project’s official closure yesterday, Mr Sam Gudoi, the programme’s chief of […]
A new approach to tackling the spread of malaria in sub-Saharan Africa, which combines affordable, easy-to-administer blood tests with machine learning and unbreakable encryption, has generated encouraging early results in Uganda. Malaria is one of the world’s leading causes of illness and death, sickening around 228 million people each year, more than 400,000 of them […]
Researchers argue that although tremendous efforts in financing and coverage of malaria control have been made, the disease has continued to be public health threat not only in Ethiopia but also at global level. Hence, assessing the entomological nature of Anopheles mosquitoes; species composition, longevity, behavior and infectivity rates among others are highly essential. According […]
An invasive weed could escalate the spread of malaria in East Africa after scientists found new evidence that it creates a favourable breeding ground for female mosquitoes, which transmit malaria. In a study published in Scientific Reports last month, researchers found that the plant popularly known as “famine weed” releases chemicals called terpene from its […]
A combination of more use of mosquito treated nets and indoor residual spraying preventive interventions has seen Rwanda slash malaria cases by 71 per cent between 2016 and 2021. Indoor residual spraying is an exercise that involves spraying households with an aim to eliminate malaria-causing mosquitoes. Speaking exclusively to this publication on Wednesday, July 21, […]
The government has received a $53m grant from the Global Fund as a contribution towards a whopping Rwf295bn ($280 million) required in malaria prevention and treatment efforts running between 2020 and 2024, The New Times has learnt. The Global Fund is a global partnership designed to accelerate the end of AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria as […]
The Benjamin Mkapa Foundation (BMF) is on a mission to establish a special fund to be contributed by development partners, health stakeholders and well-wishers, an initiative that will enable the foundation to continue improving provision of health services in the country. The initiative is being done as the nation marks the first anniversary of the […]
Bauchi State Agency for the Control of HIV/AIDS, Malaria, Leprosy and Tuberculosis (BACATMA), says it has targeted 1.5 million children for the 2021 Seasonal Malaria Chemoprevention (SMC) campaign. Mr Umar Babuga, Director, Malaria Control in the agency, stated this in an interview on Thursday in Bauchi. Babuga said the agency would conduct house-to-house exercises aimed […]