Learn more:
- What is malaria? (yourgenome website), an approachable introduction to malaria
- Malaria: the battle against a microscopic killer, a comic exploring the ongoing battle with malaria parasites
Malaria is a major public health challenge
Despite progress in fighting the illness, nearly half the world’s population – 3.2 billion people in 97 countries – are at risk of contracting malaria. In 2015, there were 212 million reported cases and 429,000 deaths, with the majority of deaths among African children under the age of five (WHO Fact Sheet on the Malaria Report 2016). As well as causing much human suffering, malaria is a massive socioeconomic burden for many of the poorest countries in the world causing an estimated USD 12 billion per year in direct losses, and a loss of 1.3% of GDP growth per year for Africa (Roll Back Malaria, Key Facts).
Malaria facts and figures:
- World Health Organization (WHO) Fact Sheet on the World Malaria Report 2015
- < href=”http://www.who.int/malaria/publications/world-malaria-report-2015/report/en/”>WHO World Malaria Report 2015, an annual assessment of global and regional malaria trends and progress
A complex lifecycle has helped to make malaria a lasting foe
An illustration of the life cycle of the malaria parasite. Image credit: Genome Research Ltd.Researchers have shown that malaria parasites originally made the jump from gorillas to humans thousands of years ago (Liu W, Li Y et al, Nature 2010). Part of the reason for the parasites’ continued success is its complex lifecycle that spans from the mosquito gut and salivary glands to the human liver and red blood cells. Most malaria drug treatments target the blood phase parasites, which can leave reservoirs elsewhere in the body, and are powerless to block transmission to and from mosquitoes.
Defeating malaria requires different types of interventions
In part thanks to this biological complexity, there is no single solution to defeating malaria. Malaria control interventions mainly target the parasite and the mosquito – acting on a single aspect of the problem – which makes it difficult to root out malaria entirely. Employing a variety of interventions, there have been tremendous gains made over the past decade in fighting malaria.
Between 2000 and 2015, malaria interventions helped to reduce malaria incidence by 37% globally, while mortality rates dropped an estimated 60% worldwide (WHO Fact Sheet on the Malaria Report 2015). Research from the Malaria Atlas Project estimated that nearly 700 million malaria cases had been averted in Africa between 2000 and 2015, highlighting the importance of insecticide-treated bednets (ITNs), artemisinin combination therapies (ACTs), and indoor residual insecticide spraying (Bhatt S, Weiss DJ, et al, Nature 2015).
More on the impact of malaria control interventions:
- Achieving the malaria MDG target: reversing the incidence of malaria 2000–2015, WHO report highlighting progress and challenges
- Malaria: ‘700 million cases’ stopped in Africa, BBC news story on the Malaria Atlas Project study
An ongoing evolutionary battle
The gains made against malaria are under threat from drug and insecticide resistance, as malaria parasites and Anopheles mosquitoes evolve to withstand the interventions designed to kill them. We also want to understand how humans evolve to naturally resist malaria. With advances in DNA sequencing technologies, we can now detect traces of these evolutionary battles in the DNA of all three malaria genomes – human, parasite and mosquito – and use this information to deploy malaria control interventions more effectively, assessing their impact and preserving their efficacy.
More on how genomics can help fight malaria:
- Why use genomics to fight malaria?
- The genes behind malaria resistance may reveal an intriguing evolutionary history, Washington Post
- Genetics of malaria drug resistance revealed, BBC
For more stories, see our News section.
