Latest Mass drug administration Stories

By Patricia Reaney LONDON (Reuters) - Certain children are more attractive targets than others for malaria-carrying mosquitoes, accounting for most new infections of the disease that kills about 2 million people each year, scientists said on Wednesday. They estimate that 80 percent of infections are concentrated in just one fifth of the population, who should be the focus of public health efforts to control the illness. "Twenty percent of people receive 80 percent of all infections,"...

Giving infants preventive treatment for malaria can reduce malaria and anaemia even in seasonal, high transmission areas such as Ghana, finds a study in this week's BMJ. But concern exists about a possible rebound when treatment is stopped, warn the authors. The study followed over 2,400 infants in Ghana who were given a preventive treatment for malaria or a placebo (dummy pill) when they received routine vaccinations and at 12 months of age. Preventive treatment reduced malaria by 25% and...

Despite changes in policy in many African countries, most cases of malaria are still treated with old drugs that often fail, say researchers in this week's BMJ. The steady increase of drug-resistant malaria across Africa has prompted many countries to adopt artemisinin combination therapies (ACTs) as policy. These drug combinations are highly effective, and appear to be safe and well tolerated. Yet a study from Zambia, one of the first adopters of ACTs, shows that only 22% of children...