NEWS: Malaria Map Paints Stark Picture, page 1

Researchers have used computer modelling to figure out how many people are suffering from malia. Their results indicate that possibly twice as many people are infected with the dreaded blood parasite Plasmodium falciparum than previously estimated. Their estimates range from 300 to 660 million, for the year 2002. The WHO estimate for 1998 was 273 million.
This research can affect everything about the disease, from its epidemiology to its treatment and pharmacology.
Map of 2002 World Wide Prevalence

Nature News
Snow's numbers are still only a rough approximation of malaria's prevalence. But "it's probably the best estimate we have", says Andrew Spielman, a specialist in tropical infectious diseases at Harvard School of Public Health in Boston. "It's known to be a terrible burden and now it appears it's even more terrible than we thought."
Snow hopes that the new study will help work out the amount of money, medicines and other resources needed to combat malaria. Without it, for example, pharmaceutical companies struggle to know how many drugs to make and public health agencies find it hard to gauge how well they are curbing the disease. The map could also help guide where in the world money and aid should be targeted.
Even so, public health researchers and advocates say that they need more. They point out that unlike other infectious diseases such as HIV and tuberculosis, we already know how to defeat malaria using simple measures such as insecticide-treated bed nets and drugs. Spielman predicts that some groups will use the study as "ammunition" to ask for more funding.

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Malaria is very much under appreciated in the west, I suspect. This is certainly because of ignorance, both from it simply not being a disease in the west, and also from there being a lack of education on the subject. Malaria is very destructive, its very deadly, and even those who don't die from it can suffer terribly.

There is a great cost in human life and happiness from not properly dealing with this disease.
Developmental Stages of P.falciparcum

Related News Links:
The Research Paper Itself
Biology Page on the Parasite
Malaria.org
Malaria Body Warns 'Ad Hoc' Funding Risky

Related AboveTopSecret.com Discussion Threads:
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[edit on 14-3-2005 by Banshee]