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The study authors say that setting up community-based malaria clinics for early diagnosis, treatment and monitoring, combined with mass antimalarial drug administration (MDA) to everyone living in ‘hotspot’ areas – even if they do not show signs of malaria – substantially reduced, often to zero, malaria incidence in remote Myanmar villages.
Combining targeted malaria elimination activities such as these with existing control programmes, study authors say, means that there is a real chance to eliminate drug-resistant P. falciparum malaria, preventing its spread to South Asia and Africa – if authorities and funders act urgently.