North-East scientist plays important role in killer disease research

4:00am Tuesday 3rd July 2007

A SCIENTIST from the North-East has been involved in important new research which could help conquer a killer disease.

Dr Gerry Killeen from Durham University has been involved in a study of the role of insecticide-treated bed nets in reducing malaria.

It suggests that more lives could be saved if heavily subsidised netting is made available to older children and adults in Africa.

Currently, affordable netting is only made available to young children and pregnant women.

The researchers estimate it would cost at least $1bn to to achieve 50 per cent coverage of the population.

Malaria is a massive health problem in Africa, killing more than a million people every year.

The research was carried out by a team from the Ifakar Health Research centre in Tanzania, led by Dr Killeen, who is a Wellcome Trust researcher from Durham Universitys School of Biological and Biomedical Sciences.

They showed that increased use of the nets can not only protect people from mosquito bites but encourage the insects to feed on other animals which do not pass on malaria.

This also has the benefit of reducing the overall total of mosquitoes carrying malaria.

Using recently-developed techniques to study the behaviour of mosquitoes, the researchers showed that if at least a third of older children and adult used the nets this would greatly increase protections.

Malaria is caused by infection with a parasite carried by the mosquito. This parasite is transmitted when a person is bitten by an infectious mosquito.

This leads to symptoms of fever, anaemia and even death.

The parasites can be passed to another mosquito if it feeds on an infected person.

Dr Killeen said: "We need to cover as many young children and pregnant women as possible without forgetting that een partial coverage of entire communities can provide greater and more equitable protection to everyone."