News

UC Davis Malaria Awareness Speakers Call Malaria 'a Global Health Disaster'

Chancellor Larry Vanderhoef says malaria is a public health problem in more than 100 countries, and praised the UC Davis involvement in reserach and control. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey)

DAVIS—Malaria is a tragedy, a scourge, and a global public health disaster, agreed speakers at the first-ever UC Davis Malaria Awareness Day Symposium.

Yet the mosquito-borne disease that kills more than a million people a year and infects between 300 to 500 million annually, primarily in Africa, is highly treatable and preventable, they said.

“It’s a global health disaster that’s due largely to the shortage of human and material resources,” said UC Davis medical entomologist Gregory Lanzaro, director of the Center for Vectorborne Diseases, which hosted the two-hour event in the Main Theatre, Wright Hall, on April 25, International Malaria Awareness Day.

“The developed world is addressing this problem now,” Lanzaro said. “It’s the right thing to do.”

The symposium, held to educate the public about the disease and the UC commitment to controlling it, drew speakers from the UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine, UC Davis College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences, UC Davis School of Medicine, UC San Francisco School of Medicine, and the Mosquito Vector and Control Association of California (MVCAC)

In his introductory remarks, Chancellor Larry Vanderhoef described malaria, one of the world’s oldest and deadliest diseases, as “a public health problem in more than 100 countries, or 40 percent of the global population.”

“It is particularly devastating in Africa,” Vanderhoef said. “Ninety-percent of the global deaths occur in Africa. Most susceptible are children under five and pregnant women.”

He praised UC Davis’ involvement in the war against malaria and for “leading the way.”

UC Davis’ first chancellor, entomologist Stanley Freeborn (1891-1960), wrote the first comprehensive review of mosquitoes in California, Vanderhoef noted. A California mosquito that transmits malaria (Anopheles freeborni), bears Freeborn’s name.

UC Davis spearheaded the formation of the statewide UC Malaria Research and Control Group, part of the UC Mosquito Research Program, both directed by Lanzaro. The group, formed in February 2006, is comprised of 21 scientists from five UC campuses, partnering with MVCAC, which includes more than 60 mosquito abatement districts in California.

Noting that a child in Africa dies every 30 seconds of malaria, Vanderhoef said: “By the time this symposium ends, at least 300 children will have died of malaria in Africa.”

Carol Medlin of the UC San Francisco School of Medicine's Institute for Global Health also praised UC Davis’ involvement. “I’m glad to see UC Davis is doing this, taking the lead.”

She called attention to the socio-economic impact of malaria and the need to translate scientific findings into policy and action. “A child in Africa dies every 30 seconds of malaria. That amounts to the entire population of San Francisco each year.”

UC Davis medical entomologist Anthony Cornel, a native of South Africa who studies the malaria mosquito, Anopheles gambiae, said “it is a tragedy that we have to be reminded about the scourge of malaria to bring mankind out of its complacency to do something about a disease that can be controlled.”

“The tools to control malaria are available,” he said, “but are not implemented properly due to civil strife and overpopulation, costs, lack of compliance, government attitude and priorities.”

The malaria mosquito feeds on people at night as they sleep, Cornel related. The female mosquito needs a blood meal to develop her eggs. “After a rain in central Africa, each home has about 10 to 15 puddles outside its door,” Cornel said, “and each puddle can yield 10,000 to 15,000 mosquitoes.”

Insecticide-treated bed nets kill the insects immediately, as do indoor residential spraying, he said, “but we need to worry about insecticide-resistant mosquitoes.” Both the malaria mosquito and the parasite it transmits, Plasmodium, are “highly adaptable.”  

Cornel listed future “novel” tools to combat malaria as “vaccines, intermittent preventative treatment, trap-and-kill systems, and genetically altered mosquitoes.”

“There are current 58 malaria vaccines in the developing stage and 15 are undergoing clinical trials,” Cornel said.

UC Davis medical entomologist Robert Washino, introduced as “the person who knows more about mosquitoes than anyone else in California,” said that six U.S. presidents, from George Washington to John F. Kennedy, contracted malaria.

“Malaria was introduced in California in 1833,” Washino said, “and it shaped the history of our state.”

Malaria swept through fur trapper, native Indian, pioneer and gold miner populations, Washino noted. It was eradicated in the 1950s, but outbreaks still occur; the most recent outbreaks surfaced in San Diego County in 1986-89. Military personnel, travelers and immigrants will continue to bring it here, he said, and “there’s the potential effect of global warming on mosquito/parasite interactions involved in malarial transmission.”

“We have to be vigilant,” Washino warned. “Five of the Anopheline mosquitoes that transmit malaria are still here in California.”

Malaria researcher Shirley Luckhart of the UC Davis School of Medicine said the most potent of the malaria parasites, Plasmodium falciparum, can kill within hours. It can reach the liver within 30 minutes, and soon after “generate 40,000 parasites in the bloodstream.”

Luckhart said 2.1 billion people live in malarious areas, with 615 million people—106 million children under five and 26 million pregnant women—at high risk.

Lanzaro predicted the UC Malaria Research and Control Group, with its noted scientists and mosquito abatement experts, will be hugely successful in combating malaria in Africa. “The Mosquito and Vector Control Association of California has the most sophisticated mosquito-control program in the world, and we’re taking that over to Africa,” Lanzaro said.

Lanzaro recently spearheaded multi-UC campus plans for a microarray of the Anopheles genome, where “we can look at 13 million genetic markers at once.”

Anthony Cornel gives the "thumbs-up" signal in Tanzania. (Photo by Steve Mulligan)

Physician Marc Schenker of UC Davis School of Medicine, who directs the Center for Occupational and Environmental Health and the UC Western Center for Agricultural Health and Safety at UC Davis and who helped form the Department of Public Health Sciences, said the campus strategic plan supports the UC commitment to attack malaria:

“Contribute to the solution of society’s most pressing health problems locally and around the globe through disciplinary and interdisciplinary research, lifelong education and community partnerships.”

Steve Mulligan, manager of the Consolidated Mosquito Abatement District, Selma and a member of the UC Malaria Research and Control Group, related that the group sent a four-member delegation to Tanzania last summer to help develop an anti-malaria program involving control and research. They worked with mosquito control administrators at the Ifakara Health Research and Development Center.

Mulligan, Lanzaro and Cornel, all part of the delegation (along with Major Dhillon, manager of the Northwest Mosquito and Vector Control District, Corona) said they hope that this will serve as a template for all of Africa.

The UC Malaria Research and Control Group’s stated aim is to “research and control mosquito vectors that cause malaria in Africa.”

Mosquito abatement experts helped wipe out malaria in California and Mulligan predicted “we can do the same in Africa.” He cited several reasons why we should. “It’s our global obligation as a leader in mosquito control to share our expertise. Controlling disease in Africa will protect us."

And, Mulligan said, showing a “thumbs-up” photo of Cornel in the West African nation of Tanzania with a young boy: “We can make a difference. It’s the right thing to do.”

See more photos