Tag: Eradication
Malaria parasites can evade rapid tests, threatening eradication goals
Over the last couple of decades, rapid diagnostic tests have emerged as a vital tool in the global fight to control malaria. The relatively inexpensive test strips have diagnosed millions of cases in just minutes, hastening access to lifesaving treatment. They’ve also drastically improved surveillance in harder-to-reach rural areas, sharpening public health experts’ view of the toll of this mosquito-borne disease that kills around half a million people globally each year.
But this progress could be undermined by the malaria-causing
The Vaccine Loophole in Polio Eradication
In 1988, the World Health Assembly announced a very ambitious goal: Polio was to be vanquished by the year 2000. It was a reach, sure, but feasible. Although highly infectious, polioviruses affect only people, and don’t hide out in wild animals; with two extraordinarily effective vaccines in regular use, they should be possible to snuff out. Thanks to a global inoculation campaign, infections had, for years, been going down, down, down.
But 2000 came and went, as did a second