A promising new stragegy to control malaria

摘要

Intermittent preventive treatment in infants is a novel control approach in which children are given a course of antimalarial drugs during their first year of life. In preliminary studies, it has been shown to cut by more than half both children's risk of contracting malaria, and the incidence of infantile anaemia. To test as quickly as possible this promising new control technique on a large scale, leading malaria research centres in Africa, Europe, and the United States, backed by two United Nations agencies, last year established the Intermittent Preventive Treatment in Infants (IPTi) Consortium (see text on inside front cover). Its creation was underwritten by a commitment of $28 million from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and have just received a $16 million round of funding.