Book Description

In the mid-1950s, with planning and funding from the United States, Mexico embarked on an ambitious campaign to eradicate malaria, which was widespread and persistent. This new history explores the politics of that campaign. Marcos Cueto describes the international basis of the program, its national organization in Mexico, its local implementation by health practitioners and workers, and its reception among the population. Drawing on archives in the United States, Mexico, and Switzerland, he highlights the militant Cold War rhetoric of the founders and analyzes the mixed motives of participants at all levels. Following the story through the dwindling campaign in the late 1960s and early 1970s, Cueto raises questions relevant to today's international health campaigns against malaria, AIDS, and tuberculosis.

Book Description
Malaria kills millions each year, targeting pregnant women and children Malaria in pregnancy has been a long-standing conundrum - why do women immune to the parasite after years of exposure suddenly become susceptible to infection during first pregnancies? Recent scientific breakthroughs have shed new light on interactions between the malaria parasite and the placenta, and raised hope for new drugs and vaccines to protect young mothers.
Malaria in Pregnancy leads the reader through decades of research in epidemiology, immunology and parasitology, drawing on scientific expertise from around the world. Maternal malaria is one of the grreat public health problems of our time and may be the first parasitic infection to be controlled with anti-adhesion drugs or vaccines. The current understanding of malaria in pregnancy and the continued controversies surrounding this syndrome will fascinate all students, scientists and policy-makers interested in infectious disease and women's health. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Fantastic!
Extremely informative and wonderfully written.

Patrick Duffy, you have outdone yourself this time.Kudos to you...Kudos indeed! ... Read more

Book Description
Malaria is a serious disease caused by a tiny mosquito-borne parasite called Plasmodium. It once affected entire empires, but thanks to the work of health organizations, malaria is now mostly confined to warm, moist climates. Scientists are still at work today, however, developing methods of curing the disease and destroying its carriers. ... Read more

Book Description

This book is an edited collection of papers by leading experts on the population genetics and evolutionary biology of malaria, a disease which results in three million deaths each year in the world. "Malaria Hypothesis" refers to the hypothesis, which was proposed by J.B.S. Haldane at the 8th International Congress of Genetics in Stockholm in 1948, that the identical geographic distribution of both falciparum malaria and thalassemia in the mediterranean region suggests that the heterozygous individuals for thalassemia (or microcythemia as it was called then) might have greater resistance to malarial infection. Haldane, later in the same year, expanded his theory to infectious disease in general at another international conference, at Pallanza in Italy. Haldane's hypothesis was subsequently confirmed in the African populations by A.C. Allison and later by others during the last fifty years, although at first for sickle cell anemia and later for thalassemia with varying degrees of success. The malaria hypothesis still remains today a unique example of that kind of balanced polymorphism, not only in genetics but in all of biology. It opened up new insights into our perspective of the genetics and population dynamics of disease prevalence, particularly infectious disease.

Book Description
Challenging traditional approaches to medical history, Disease in the History of Modern Latin America advances understandings of disease as a social and cultural construction in Latin America. This innovative collection provides a vivid look at the latest research in the cultural history of medicine through insightful essays about how disease—whether it be cholera or aids, leprosy or mental illness—was experienced and managed in different Latin American countries and regions, at different times from the late nineteenth century to the present.

Based on the idea that the meanings of sickness—and health—are contestable and subject to controversy, Disease in the History of Modern Latin America displays the richness of an interdisciplinary approach to social and cultural history. Examining diseases in Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, Colombia, Peru, and Bolivia, the contributors explore the production of scientific knowledge, literary metaphors for illness, domestic public health efforts, and initiatives shaped by the agendas of international agencies. They also analyze the connections between ideas of sexuality, disease, nation, and modernity; the instrumental role of certain illnesses in state-building processes; welfare efforts sponsored by the state and led by the medical professions; and the boundaries between individual and state responsibilities regarding sickness and health. Diego Armus’s introduction contextualizes the essays within the history of medicine, the history of public health, and the sociocultural history of disease.

Contributors. Diego Armus, Anne-Emanuelle Birn, Kathleen Elaine Bliss, Ann S. Blum, Marilia Coutinho, Marcus Cueto, Patrick Larvie, Gabriela Nouzeilles, Diana Obregón, Nancy Lays Stepan, Ann Zulawski ... Read more

Book Description
This inter-agency handbook focuses on effective malaria control responses to complex emergencies, particularly during the acute phase when reliance on international humanitarian assistance is greatest. It provides policy-makers, planners, field programme managers and medical coordinators with practical guidance on designing and implementing measures to reduce malaria morbidity and mortality. Such measures must address the needs of both the displaced and the host populations and must accommodate the changes in those needs as an acute emergency evolves into a more stable situation. A glossary is provided at the beginning of the handbook and suggestions for further reading are included at the end of several chapters. ... Read more

Book Description
Anglo-European Science and the Rhetoric of Empire presents the recorded facts of alleged medical use of opium in colonial India and British examination and the ultimate acceptance of this practice. Placing the opium controversy in its broad context, the book sheds light on British diplomatic methods for prolonging colonial rule. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Paul Winther is my uncle
Most research on opium during the nineteenth century has focused either on Britain or China. A good deal has been written on opium usage in Britain, as well as moral and medical attitudes towards the substance, and the history of Anglo-Chinese political and economic relationships generally give a prominent place to opium and its wars. Britain and China were primarily consumers during the century, and until late on, most of the drug came from India. By the 1890s, more poppies were being grown in China and the Middle East, and the market share enjoyed by Indian producers was being challenged.

Paul C. Winther's decision to concentrate his research on India is thus to be applauded, as is his exposition of debates about the value of opium as a protective and possible cure for cases of malaria. As he points out, the "malaria" diagnosis during his period was vague, and included many fevers that were subsequently differentiated, on the basis of subtly different clinical courses and a variety of specific causative agents. The malaria and opium nexus is consequently extremely tenuous, and nineteenth-century judgments about the drug's role in treating fevers were a heady mix of moral, economic, and psychological factors.

For readers like myself with a vested interest in his particular theme, Winther has much to offer. He has read widely and offers full descriptions of a number of works relevant to the topic. Almost half of the book is devoted to the evidence collected by the 1894 Royal Commission on Opium. He shows how the seven volumes of evidence and conclusions were collected and analysed, concentrating especially on the key medical member of the Commission, Sir William Roberts, a prominent Manchester physician. The Commission took evidence from a wide variety of witnesses, British as well as Indian, and they heard an equally wide variety of opinion, about the extent of opium use in India, as well as its medical value. Given the Government of India's need for the revenues from the drug, both as a source of export income and as a tidy profit from home sales (the Government controlled most production), the Committee's recommendation that the opium trade be continued is hardly surprising. Whether the Committee was convened simply to pacify the increasingly vocal activities of the Society for the Suppression of the Opium Trade is another matter.

Winther implies that there was collusion and deliberate selection of testimony favourable to the economic interests of the Government of India. The evidence, as presented here, is less compelling. Roberts certainly interpreted the evidence with which he had been presented to conclude that the medical value of opium was such that a prohibition on its sale (and export) would be unjustified. In addition, he drew on two earlier studies that purported to demonstrate the value of opium as an effective drug against malaria. Using hindsight, it is easy for Winther to show that these clinical studies were rather inconclusive and faulty. In his eagerness to condemn Roberts, Winther uses modern criteria of clinical evaluation, and at one point castigates Roberts for not being aware of Ronald Ross's researches on the mode of transmission of malaria. Given the fact that Roberts was writing two years before Ross published anything on the subject, this is historical hindsight with a vengeance.

Winther's study is a valuable contribution to our understanding of the Indian dimension of opium production and use. Its value to students of the history of malaria is less clear. He has uncovered some salient debates on the relative merits of opium and quinine in cases of "fever," but his trawling of the literature on fevers in nineteenth-century India is selective, and opium featured much less in this literature that an uncritical reading of this monograph would suggest.

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Book Description
Malaria is a serious disease which affects millions of people and kills many children each day.This book explores how families cope with frequent bouts of malaria and explains what causes the disease, how it is spread, and what is being done to treat and prevent it. ... Read more

Book Description
Despite rapid increases in knowledge, malaria continues to kill more than a million people each year and causes symptomatic disease in a further 300 million individuals. This volume brings some of the world's best investigators to describe recent advances in both the scientific and clinical aspects of malaria, and bridges between the two. ... Read more

Book Description
Malaria and Rome is the first comprehensive study of malaria in ancient Italy since the research of the distinguished Italian malariologist Angelo Celli in the early twentieth century. It demonstrates the importance of disease patterns and history in understanding the demography of ancient populations. Robert Sallares argues that malaria became increasingly prevalent in Roman times in central Italy as a result of ecological change and alterations to the physical landscape such as deforestation. Making full use of contemporary sources and comparative material from other periods, he shows that malaria had a significant effect on mortality rates in certain regions of Roman Italy.Robert Sallares incorporates all the important advances made in many relevant fields since Celli's time. These include recent geomorphological research on the evolution of the coastal environments of Italy that were notorious for malaria in the past, biomolecular research on the evolution of malaria, ancient DNA as a new source of evidence for malaria in antiquity, the differentiation of mosquito species that permits understanding of the phenomenon of anophelism without malaria (where the climate is optimal for malaria and Anopheles mosquitoes are present, but there is no malaria), and recent medical research on the interactions between malaria and other diseases.The argument develops with a careful interplay between the modern microbiology of the disease and the Greek and Latin literary texts. Both contemporary sources and comparative material from other periods are used to interpret the ancient sources. In addition to the medical and demographic effects on the Roman population, Malaria and Romeconsiders the social and economic effects of malaria, for example on settlement patterns and on agricultural systems. Robert Sallares also examines the varied human responses to and interpretations of malaria in antiquity, ranging from the attempts at rational understanding made by the Hippocratic authors and Galen to the demons described in the magical papyri. ... Read more

Book Description
Once an enchanted paradise, now the island of Mannar is polluted, its wildlife dead or dying. Zoologist and TV personality, Sir Alexander Haye acquires two of the island’s last remaining elephants – a mother and her calf – for the London Zoo. Alexander’s twin brother, Max, escorts the animals to England, where, sick at heart, he delivers them to their fate. But he’s returned with more than the elephants, as he learns when malaria plunges him into fevered hallucinations. ... Read more

Book Description
Malaria is a serious disease which affects millions of people and kills many children each day.This book explores how families cope with frequent bouts of malaria and explains what causes the disease, how it is spread, and what is being done to treat and prevent it. ... Read more

Book Description
*One of 14 publications comprising the official UN strategy on how to reduce extreme poverty and achieve the fundamental worldwide human development goals for the coming decade
*Project directed by Jeffrey D. Sachs, named one of the 100 most influential people in the world by Time Magazine, current Director of The Earth Institute, Columbia University, and Special Adviser to UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan
*The essential reference work for all governments, policymakers, aid and donor agencies, development practitioners, researchers, and students worldwide


"Coming to Grips with Malaria in the New Millennium" presents an innovative strategic framework for relieving the burden that malaria imposes on society through the implementation of tried and tested anti-malarial interventions designed to improve health nationally and to promote economic development locally. Recommendations include early diagnosis, treatment with effective anti-malarial medicines, the use of insecticide treated nets, indoor residual spraying, managing the environment, improving housing, extending health education, and improving monitoring and evaluation systems.

The UN Millennium Development Library
Coming to Grips with Malaria in the New Millennium, in conjunction with the flagship publication Investing in Development, is one of 13 thematic publications that comprise the UN Millennium Library. This set of reference handbooks charts world progress and presents strategies for dramatically reducing extreme poverty in its many dimensions--income poverty, hunger, disease, exclusion, lack of infrastructure, and shelter--by 2015, while promoting gender equality, education, health, and environmental sustainability. This Library is the official, comprehensive point of reference and action plan for achieving the fundamental development objectives embodied in the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) adopted by the UN and world leaders in 2000. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Coming to Grips with Malaria in the New Millennnium
This is an excellent book. It outlines the United Nations goals and provides an approach to deal with malaria. I would recommend this to anyone interested in tropical diseases or international development issues.

A must-read on Malaria
This is a UN publication resulting from the Millennium Development Goals laid down in 2000. It reads like the report that it is, but the facts are so staggering that one cannot possibly be bored, although some skimming may be required. For those of limited time, there is an executive summary right at the front. What will you learn? That 50% of the world's population is exposed to malaria; that the disease results in 1.1-2.7 million deaths each year; and that 20% of childhood deaths in sub-Saharan Africa are attributable to malaria, just to name a few of the informational tidbits found in these pages. This report outlines concrete solutions to preventing and controlling the disease, and the steps required to achieve them. It also covers obstacles to success, namely financial, but including multimedicine resistance and intellectual property rights issues.This book is a must-read for anyone seeking to understand malaria and other diseases, and the gloabl response to them. ... Read more

Book Description
Molecular Approaches to Malaria provides an overview of the rapid andsignificant developments that have occurred in malaria research, including the 2002 genome sequencing of Plasmodium falciparum and its mosquitovector, Anopheles gambiae. An important resource for molecular biologists, biochemists, cell biologists, chemists, pathologists, parasitologists,entomologists, and immunologists. Molecular Approaches to Malaria is asingle reference source that will serve likewise to update teachers,investigators, and public health officials on the status of malariaresearch. ... Read more

Book Description
Despite extensive efforts to control it, malaria is still one of the mostdevastating infectious diseases worldwide. This book, now in its secondedition, provides a broad and up-to-date overview of the rapidly expanding field of malaria immunology and its importance in the control of thisdisease. The first section deals with the malaria parasite and itsinteractions with both the vertebrate host and the mosquitoes whichtransmit the disease. In the second part, the mechanisms of immunity andtheir regulation by environmental and genetic factors are discussed.Finally, this volume contains several chapters on malaria vaccinedevelopment, describing the application of the most recent vaccinetechnologies as well as ongoing and planned vaccine trials. Authored bywell-recognized experts, this volume not only demonstrates the rapidprogress being made in the search for vaccines against malaria, but alsobroadens our understanding of immunity to infection in general. It istherefore highly recommended reading for all scientists and professionalsin the fields of immunology, infection and vaccine development. ... Read more