Monday, March 23, 2009

World TB Day

World TB Day is tomorrow, 24 March. More here, and there is also a blog. The theme carries on from last year and is "I am stopping TB".

Tuesday, March 17, 2009

Malaria resources

Prompted by the coverage of malaria during the recent Comic Relief programmes, here are some useful looking resources largely found through Intute:

Malaria Foundation International – mission "to facilitate the development and implementation of solutions to the health, economic and social problems caused by malaria". Site includes links to the 2008 World Malaria Report and the WHO Global Malaria Action Plan, as well as foundation projects.

Malariasite – comprehensive site.

Malaria – Wellcome Foundation site, includes very short guides to the parasite, mosquitoes and the extent of the problem, and interactive life cycle of the malaria parasite.

Malaria Past and Present - Nobel Prize organisation site. Details of historical figures in the field (Alphonse Laveran, Ronald Ross, Paul Muller), and interactive mosquito game and parasite game.

Medicines for Malaria Venture –partnership between the public sector and the pharmaceutical industry, which aims to discover new effective and affordable drugs.

POSTNote – Tackling malaria in developing countries – UK Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology document examining progress towards the Millennium Goal of halting the spread of malaria by 2015.

European Malaria Vaccine Initiative – EU/European Commission body which contributes financially and technically to vaccine development.

SciDevNet – SciDev.Net provides news and information about science and the developing world.

Malaria: an online resource - from the Royal Perth Hospital, Australia. Diagnosis, treatment, prophylaxis, and photomicrographs of blood films ("teach and test").

Malaria – MedlinePlus interactive tutorial with PDF summary.

Roll Back Malaria Partnership – partnership between WHO, UNICEF, World Bank and UN Development Programme.

Insecticide treated malaria nets: a WHO position statement]

Malaria Consortium – organisation aiming to improve treatment and prevention of malaria. Provided support to Comic Relief 2009.


Incidence and statistics

Malaria Atlas Project – the project aims to map the extent of P. falciparum and P. vivax malaria.

World Malaria Report 2008 – WHO report detailing cases of malaria and deaths from the disease, and implementation of WHO measures against malaria. Site also includes profiles of endemic countries and a link to the WHO Global Health Atlas of infectious disease. The WHO also has a general malaria site.

UNICEF – statistics on prevention, treatment and incidence.

Genomic information

Plasmodium falciparum genome projects - Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute. Site includes links to genomic information on other Plasmodium parasites.

Anobase – the Anopheles database. Genomic and biological information particularly about Anopheles gambiae.

PlasmoDB – genomic and proteomic data about the various species of Plasmodium.

TIGR – Institute for Genomic Research – TIGR's parasites database includes sequencing information for P. vivax, P. falciparum and P. yoelii. Sequencing is ongoing.