Grand Challenge: End Malaria Deaths
I just got off a conference call hosted by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation for bloggers interested in the fight against malaria. Specifically, the call focused on the Grand Challenges Explorations, a grant program that aims to foster innovation in global health research. The Foundation commits $100 million to “expand the pipeline of ideas to fight our greatest health challenges.”
As World Malaria Day fast approaches, this call focuses particularly on 3 grant recipients who have made some pretty great achievements in fighting malaria through innovation and hard work. Dr. Szabolcs Marka of Columbia University is an astrophysicist, which was fairly compelling to me as that’s not a field I would generally associate with fighting malaria. But his really innovative idea to use optical ways—essentially a flashlight– to disrupt mosquitoes’ sensory networks, thereby limiting their ability to locate human prey, made a lot of sense to me.
Brian Foy of Colorado State University is seeking to end malaria deaths through other ways by developing and strategically employing drugs that would be administered to humans and then kill mosquitoes upon contact with the blood. Pradipsinh Rathod of the University of Washington seeks to confront the problem of mutating strains of malaria by searching for small molecules that could inhibit some of these mutations and give traditional drugs a fighting chance to make an impact.
It was fantastic to hear about this great program and the excellent work being done all around the world to come up with innovative and creative ways to end malaria deaths. You can learn more about Grand Challenge Explorations here.
-Chris Scott
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April 23, 2009 at 5:10 pm
Why is there no push to use DDT in the proper ways to kill mosquitos? There is no mention of the fact that it can be used safely and be extremely effective in the battle against malaria. Many studies have shown that if it is used properly, other animals and plants are not harmed, as some would have us believe.
April 24, 2009 at 12:51 pm
Check it out. Instead of eradicating the mosquitos (a major part of the food chain), why not simply vaccinate us humans?
http://www.cnn.com/2009/HEALTH/04/23/malaria.vaccine/index.html
July 22, 2009 at 12:08 am
Andrew, we’ve known about malaria since the end of the 19 century and vaccines have been used widely since the 1950s (and dating back at least as far as 1796). The lack of an effective vaccine for malaria is certainly not from a lack of trying or money, it is just a difficult pathogen to find an effective vaccine.
April 20, 2010 at 5:18 pm
in terms of education i found that many of the people here in england and possibly all of developed countries know of malaria but do not understand malaria ..there where comments on the YouTube clips on end malaria and many comments said there is no way of ending malaria and that nets are useless etc ..the fact that these people saw the clip shows that they are blameless but more importantly it shows that the clip wasn’t educating enough ..and you realize that these comments are discouraging potential supporters of the cause. people are keen to put opinions through and even battle them so why not you the professionals put some comments for the YouTube clips and encourage a debate …i promise you the people who reply and comment.. that energy they will input in this is what you’ve been targeting
people need to know that these numbers, these statistics are people (so please look into better ways to give the people suffering from malaria or will be a voice )