The Long Struggle against Malaria in Tropical Africa

The Long Struggle against Malaria in Tropical Africa PDF Author: James L. A. Webb, Jr
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139917072
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 243

Get Book

Book Description
The Long Struggle against Malaria in Tropical Africa investigates the changing entomological, parasitological and medical understandings of vectors, parasites and malarial disease that have shaped the programs of malaria control and altered the transmission of malarial infections. It examines the history of malaria control and eradication in the contexts of racial thought, population movements, demographic growth, economic change, urbanization, warfare and politics. It will be useful for students of medicine and public health, for those who are involved with malaria research studies, and for those who work on the contemporary malaria control and elimination campaigns in tropical Africa.

The Long Struggle against Malaria in Tropical Africa

The Long Struggle against Malaria in Tropical Africa PDF Author: James L. A. Webb, Jr
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139917072
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 243

Get Book

Book Description
The Long Struggle against Malaria in Tropical Africa investigates the changing entomological, parasitological and medical understandings of vectors, parasites and malarial disease that have shaped the programs of malaria control and altered the transmission of malarial infections. It examines the history of malaria control and eradication in the contexts of racial thought, population movements, demographic growth, economic change, urbanization, warfare and politics. It will be useful for students of medicine and public health, for those who are involved with malaria research studies, and for those who work on the contemporary malaria control and elimination campaigns in tropical Africa.

The Long Struggle against Malaria in Tropical Africa

The Long Struggle against Malaria in Tropical Africa PDF Author: James L. A. Webb (Jr.)
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107052572
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 243

Get Book

Book Description
The first history of malaria control efforts in tropical Africa, contributing to the emerging sub-discipline of the historical epidemiology of contemporary disease challenges.

Saving Lives, Buying Time

Saving Lives, Buying Time PDF Author: Institute of Medicine
Publisher: National Academies Press
ISBN: 0309165938
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 384

Get Book

Book Description
For more than 50 years, low-cost antimalarial drugs silently saved millions of lives and cured billions of debilitating infections. Today, however, these drugs no longer work against the deadliest form of malaria that exists throughout the world. Malaria deaths in sub-Saharan Africaâ€"currently just over one million per yearâ€"are rising because of increased resistance to the old, inexpensive drugs. Although effective new drugs called "artemisinins" are available, they are unaffordable for the majority of the affected population, even at a cost of one dollar per course. Saving Lives, Buying Time: Economics of Malaria Drugs in an Age of Resistance examines the history of malaria treatments, provides an overview of the current drug crisis, and offers recommendations on maximizing access to and effectiveness of antimalarial drugs. The book finds that most people in endemic countries will not have access to currently effective combination treatments, which should include an artemisinin, without financing from the global community. Without funding for effective treatment, malaria mortality could double over the next 10 to 20 years and transmission will intensify.

Cold War, Deadly Fevers

Cold War, Deadly Fevers PDF Author: Marcos Cueto
Publisher: Woodrow Wilson Center Press
ISBN: 0801886457
Category : Health & Fitness
Languages : en
Pages : 282

Get Book

Book Description
Publisher description

The Malaria Project

The Malaria Project PDF Author: Karen M. Masterson
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0698140133
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 384

Get Book

Book Description
A fascinating and shocking historical exposé, The Malaria Project is the story of America's secret mission to combat malaria during World War II—a campaign modeled after a German project which tested experimental drugs on men gone mad from syphilis. American war planners, foreseeing the tactical need for a malaria drug, recreated the German model, then grew it tenfold. Quickly becoming the biggest and most important medical initiative of the war, the project tasked dozens of the country’s top research scientists and university labs to find a treatment to remedy half a million U.S. troops incapacitated by malaria. Spearheading the new U.S. effort was Dr. Lowell T. Coggeshall, the son of a poor Indiana farmer whose persistent drive and curiosity led him to become one of the most innovative thinkers in solving the malaria problem. He recruited private corporations, such as today's Squibb and Eli Lilly, and the nation’s best chemists out of Harvard and Johns Hopkins to make novel compounds that skilled technicians tested on birds. Giants in the field of clinical research, including the future NIH director James Shannon, then tested the drugs on mental health patients and convicted criminals—including infamous murderer Nathan Leopold. By 1943, a dozen strains of malaria brought home in the veins of sick soldiers were injected into these human guinea pigs for drug studies. After hundreds of trials and many deaths, they found their “magic bullet,” but not in a U.S. laboratory. America 's best weapon against malaria, still used today, was captured in battle from the Nazis. Called chloroquine, it went on to save more lives than any other drug in history. Karen M. Masterson, a journalist turned malaria researcher, uncovers the complete story behind this dark tale of science, medicine and war. Illuminating, riveting and surprising, The Malaria Project captures the ethical perils of seeking treatments for disease while ignoring the human condition.

Humanity's Burden

Humanity's Burden PDF Author: James L. A. Webb, Jr.
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521670128
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 248

Get Book

Book Description
Humanity's Burden provides a panoramic overview of the history of malaria. It traces the long arc of malaria out of tropical Africa into Eurasia, its transfer to the Americas during the early years of the Columbian exchange, and its retraction from the middle latitudes into the tropics since the late nineteenth century. Adopting a broadly comparative approach to historical patterns and processes, it synthesizes research findings from the natural and social sciences and weaves these understandings into a narrative that reaches from the earliest evidence of malaria infections in tropical Africa up to the present. Written in a style that is easily accessible to non-specialists, it considers the significance of genetic mutations, diet, lifestyle, migration, warfare, palliative and curative treatment, and efforts to interrupt transmission on the global distribution of malaria.

Disease Control Priorities, Third Edition (Volume 6)

Disease Control Priorities, Third Edition (Volume 6) PDF Author: King K. Holmes
Publisher: World Bank Publications
ISBN: 1464805253
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 506

Get Book

Book Description
Infectious diseases are the leading cause of death globally, particularly among children and young adults. The spread of new pathogens and the threat of antimicrobial resistance pose particular challenges in combating these diseases. Major Infectious Diseases identifies feasible, cost-effective packages of interventions and strategies across delivery platforms to prevent and treat HIV/AIDS, other sexually transmitted infections, tuberculosis, malaria, adult febrile illness, viral hepatitis, and neglected tropical diseases. The volume emphasizes the need to effectively address emerging antimicrobial resistance, strengthen health systems, and increase access to care. The attainable goals are to reduce incidence, develop innovative approaches, and optimize existing tools in resource-constrained settings.

The Making of a Tropical Disease

The Making of a Tropical Disease PDF Author: Randall M. Packard
Publisher: JHU Press
ISBN: 1421441799
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 351

Get Book

Book Description
A global history of malaria that traces the natural and social forces that have shaped its spread and made it deadly, while limiting efforts to eliminate it. Malaria sickens hundreds of millions of people—and kills nearly a half a million—each year. Despite massive efforts to eradicate the disease, it remains a major public health problem in poorer tropical regions. But malaria has not always been concentrated in tropical areas. How did malaria disappear from other regions, and why does it persist in the tropics? From Russia to Bengal to Palm Beach, Randall M. Packard's far-ranging narrative shows how the history of malaria has been driven by the interplay of social, biological, economic, and environmental forces. The shifting alignment of these forces has largely determined the social and geographical distribution of the disease, including its initial global expansion, its subsequent retreat to the tropics, and its current persistence. Packard argues that efforts to control and eliminate malaria have often ignored this reality, relying on the use of biotechnologies to fight the disease. Failure to address the forces driving malaria transmission have undermined past control efforts. Describing major changes in both the epidemiology of malaria and efforts to control the disease, the revised edition of this acclaimed history, which was chosen as the 2008 End Malaria Awards Book of the Year in its original printing, • examines recent efforts to eradicate malaria following massive increases in funding and political commitment; • discusses the development of new malaria-fighting biotechnologies, including long-lasting insecticide-treated nets, rapid diagnostic tests, combination artemisinin therapies, and genetically modified mosquitoes; • explores the efficacy of newly developed vaccines; and • explains why eliminating malaria will also require addressing the social forces that drive the disease and building health infrastructures that can identify and treat the last cases of malaria. Authoritative, fascinating, and eye-opening, this short history of malaria concludes with policy recommendations for improving control strategies and saving lives.

When People Come First

When People Come First PDF Author: João Biehl
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691157391
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 454

Get Book

Book Description
A people-centered approach to global health When People Come First critically assesses the expanding field of global health. It brings together an international and interdisciplinary group of scholars to address the medical, social, political, and economic dimensions of the global health enterprise through vivid case studies and bold conceptual work. The book demonstrates the crucial role of ethnography as an empirical lantern in global health, arguing for a more comprehensive, people-centered approach. Topics include the limits of technological quick fixes in disease control, the moral economy of global health science, the unexpected effects of massive treatment rollouts in resource-poor contexts, and how right-to-health activism coalesces with the increased influence of the pharmaceutical industry on health care. The contributors explore the altered landscapes left behind after programs scale up, break down, or move on. We learn that disease is really never just one thing, technology delivery does not equate with care, and biology and technology interact in ways we cannot always predict. The most effective solutions may well be found in people themselves, who consistently exceed the projections of experts and the medical-scientific, political, and humanitarian frameworks in which they are cast. When People Come First sets a new research agenda in global health and social theory and challenges us to rethink the relationships between care, rights, health, and economic futures.

The Fever

The Fever PDF Author: Sonia Shah
Publisher: Macmillan + ORM
ISBN: 1429981172
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 319

Get Book

Book Description
In recent years, malaria has emerged as a cause célèbre for voguish philanthropists. Bill Gates, Bono, and Laura Bush are only a few of the personalities who have lent their names—and opened their pocketbooks—in hopes of curing the disease. Still, in a time when every emergent disease inspires waves of panic, why aren't we doing more to eradicate one of our oldest foes? And how does a parasitic disease that we've known how to prevent for more than a century still infect 500 million people every year, killing nearly 1 million of them? In The Fever, the journalist Sonia Shah sets out to answer these questions, delivering a timely, inquisitive chronicle of the illness and its influence on human lives. Through the centuries, she finds, we've invested our hopes in a panoply of drugs and technologies, and invariably those hopes have been dashed. From the settling of the New World to the construction of the Panama Canal, through wars and the advances of the Industrial Revolution, Shah tracks malaria's jagged ascent and the tragedies in its wake, revealing a parasite every bit as persistent as the insects that carry it. With distinguished prose and original reporting from Panama, Malawi, Cameroon, India, and elsewhere, The Fever captures the curiously fascinating, devastating history of this long-standing thorn in the side of humanity.