It’s the first of its kind in a period of forty years. It reveals the vulnerability of 35 percent of world population in contrcting malaria but raises the hope for elimination of the disease in parts of the world. Researchers at Oxford University and the Kenyan Medical Research Institute, including a scientist at the University of Florida Emerging Pathogens Institute spent three years producing the Malaria Atlas Project, or MAP.
Through the map, they found that 2.37 billion people were at risk of contracting malaria from Plasmodium faciparum, the most deadly malaria parasite for humans transmitted through the bites of infected Anopheles mosquitoes.
Out of that number, about 1 billion people live under a much lower risk of infection than was assumed under the previous historical maps.
Less than expected risk extends across Central and South America, Asia and even parts of Africa, the continent where malaria kills a large number of its victims and where risk has historically been classified as universally high.
'This gives some hope of pursuing malaria elimination because the prevalence isn’t as universally high as many people suppose,' said David Smith, a UF associate professor of zoology and a co-author of the paper.
'It’s reasonable to think we can reduce or interrupt transmission in many places, but the prospects for success will improve if we make plans that are based on good information about malaria’s distribution,' he added.
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The project also included information about how climatic conditions affect mosquito life cycles, and thus the likelihood of active transmission.
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They further said that the project will also help donors and international agencies target investments in control measures where they are most likely to achieve the biggest gains.
'Making data and maps more accessible on the worldwide web is a large part of the MAP’s philosophy of getting the science accessed, critiqued and used by a much wider range of users,' said the lead author of the study, Carlos Guerra, of the University of Oxford.
The findings appear in the online edition of the open-access medical journal, PLoS Medicine
Source-ANI
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