At least 350 million people contract malaria each year. About one million of them die. Most of those are children in sub-Saharan Africa. This week, scientists at the University of Michigan announced their latest findings in their efforts to control this dreaded disease, the most common parasitic infection of humans on the planet.
In a study published in American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene, an international team of researchers that included members from the University of Michigan found that found that the greatest risk factor for a child living in an urban area in Kenya was whether the child spent at least one night a month in a rural area. Those children were nine times more likely to contract malaria.
In a press release, Mark Wilson, professor of epidemiology at the University of Michigan School of Public Health and professor of ecology and evolutionary biology in the College of Letters, Science, and the Arts, said, "We found that factors like house construction and mosquito coils weren't important, whereas traveling to rural areas was. That probably relates to the lack of the use of bed nets in those rural areas."
Wilson continued, "It's very important to know where infection originates because the only way to interrupt transmission is by focusing on people and places at highest risk. Also, without pinpointing where or when people were infected, one might be taking the wrong precautionary measures."
In their paper, Wilson and his co-authors suggested that people who visit the African countryside, whether residents or tourists, should carry bed nets with them. On the other hand, foreign tourists staying in hotels in the cities are a relatively low risk because the hotels have screens and mosquito nets. In addition, tourists will most likely be taking anti-malarial drugs.
Wilson is now studying urban malaria epidemiology in Blantyre, Malawi, in collaboration with Don Mathanga, a former Ph.D. student. Their investigations, along with colleagues at Michigan State University and other major research institutions, are part of a recently awarded seven-year National Institutes of Health grant establishing an International Center of Excellence for Malaria Research in Malawi.
In addition to Wilson, the study's co-authors included Susan Murray from the University of Michigan, Jose Siri, a recent Ph.D. graduate of the University of Michigan now working at the Health and Global Change Project, International Institute for Systems Analysis, Laxenburg, Austria, Daniel H. Rosen, Laurence Slutsker, and Kim A. Lindblade from the Centers for Diseases Control and Prevention, and John M. Vulule from the Centre for Vector Biology and Control Research, Kenya Medical Research Institute, Kisumu, Kenya. Their research was supported by the Centers for Disease Control and by the University of Michigan through the Rackham Graduate School, the Center for Research on Ethnicity, Culture and Health, and the Global Health Program.
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