Anti-malaria research receives funding boost

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, founded by the American software tycoon, Bill Gates, has made a US $16-million grant to help fight malaria among infants living in Africa, the organisation announced on Monday. The grant will be used by the Intermittent Preventive Treatment (IPTi) Consortium to conduct five studies in Africa using existing anti-malarials to protect infants from the most severe effects of the disease. A UN World Health Organization programme report describes IPTi as a system in which a full dose of anti-malarial medication is administered to children at specific times during their first year of life. The drugs are administered regardless of the presence or absence of malaria parasites. The WHO report says the new technique has been observed to reduce the chances of contracting malaria during the first year by 60 percent. It also reduces the incidence of infantile anaemia by 57 percent. This latest grant is part of a $28 million commitment to the IPTi announced by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation in September of 2003. The IPTi hopes to generate additional information on topics such as the relationship between IPTi and the development of drug resistance, the impact of IPTi on the development of malarial immunity, and an assessment of cost-effectiveness, acceptability, mortality impact and community effectiveness. The WHO report said that because of increasing resistance in parts of Africa to the current standard antimalarial drug sulphadoxine/pyrimethamine, two trials - in Kenya and northern Tanzania - were being used to test different combinations of drugs.