Malaria

The latest issue of id21 Insights, a web magazine "enabled" by DFID and produced by the Institute for Development Studies at the University of Sussex, has a malaria theme. It looks at household and community responses to malaria in Africa, with several articles about mosquito nets, and others about cultural and social factors, and about malaria control in refugee camps.

SciDev.Net reports a programme that will use home computers to investigate how malaria spreads. Africa @ Home will use spare capacity of home PCs to run a simulation of how malaria spreads.

SciDev.Net also reports a paper published in Nature Chemical Biology, in which researchers used a drug library to find drugs with possible activity against the malaria parasite. The Johns Hopkins Chemical Compound Library provided the information, and this library is now being expanded. Researchers report that astemizole (an anti allergy drug) looked as if it might have this activity: it proved effective in mice. Read more about this in SciDev.Net.


This issue of id21 Insights is at http://www.id21.org/insights/insights-h09/index.html. You can read more about Africa @ Home at http://www.scidev.net/News/index.cfm?fuseaction=readNews&itemid=2990&language=1.