New estimates of the global population at risk of Plasmodium vivax malaria
Tuesday, August 3, 2010 - 16:07
in Health & Medicine
A new evidence-based global distribution map of Plasmodium vivax malaria, published August 3 in the open-access journal PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases, is used to estimate that 2.85 billion people lived at risk of infection with this parasite in 2009. The map, created as part of the Malaria Atlas Project (MAP), a multinational research collaboration funded mainly by the Wellcome Trust, reviews a host of information that challenges the dogma that P. vivax transmission is absent through large swathes of Africa and uses novel methods - including new global maps of the protective Duffy negativity blood condition - to estimate global populations at risk.