Malaria Elimination through Innovative Vector Control
Malaria deaths dropped by nearly half between 2000 and 2013, according to the World Health Organization. Yet there were still nearly 200 million malaria cases and approximately 600,000 malaria-related deaths in 2013. Bold research and additional investment are urgently needed to identify and prioritize new or underutilized tools against the Anopheles mosquito, which transmits the disease, in order to achieve global malaria eradication. A major challenge is that about 40 of the 430 species of Anopheles mosquito, each with distinct ecological and biological characteristics, efficiently transmit malaria; so no universal solution for mosquito control exists.
The ProgramThe Parker Foundation’s support for the Global Health Group’s Malaria Elimination Initiative (MEI) at the University of California San Francisco will enable a comprehensive review of successful vector control tools and strategies for malaria and other vector-borne diseases. The research will include modeling and spatial analyses to generate new robust evidence on factors that influence malaria transmission in different settings today, in order to identify high-impact approaches to radically reduce transmission. Examples include improved housing materials, environmental engineering, aerial insecticide spraying to kill mosquito larvae; as well as new tools under development, such as genetically modified mosquitoes, fungal biopesticides, and nanoparticle insecticide delivery that controls the release of insecticides over time or by using triggers such as rainfall or temperature. UCSF researchers will also learn from other efforts against mosquito-borne diseases, such as dengue and chikungunya. The Global Health Group will engage a wide range of entomological, epidemiological and modeling experts from California and around the world to advance this work.
Sir Richard Feachem, KBE, CBE, BSc, PhD, DSc(Med), FREng, HonFFPHM, HonDEng
- Director of the Global Health Group
- University of California San Francisco