Catálogo de publicaciones - revistas

<jats:p> The African continent continues to bear the greatest burden of malaria and the greatest diversity of parasites, mosquito vectors, and human victims. The evolutionary plasticity of malaria parasites and their vectors is a major obstacle to eliminating the disease. Of current concern is the recently reported emergence of resistance to the front-line drug, artemisinin, in South-East Asia in <jats:italic>Plasmodium falciparum</jats:italic> , which calls for preemptive surveillance of the African parasite population for genetic markers of emerging drug resistance. Here we describe the Plasmodium Diversity Network Africa (PDNA), which has been established across 11 countries in sub-Saharan Africa to ensure that African scientists are enabled to work together and to play a key role in the global effort for tracking and responding to this public health threat. </jats:p>

<jats:p>Antibiotic effectiveness is a natural societal resource that is diminished by antibiotic use. As with other such assets, keeping it available requires both conservation and innovation. Conservation encompasses making the best use of current antibiotic effectiveness by reducing demand through vaccination, infection control, diagnostics, public education, incentives for clinicians to prescribe fewer antibiotics, and restrictions on access to newer, last-resort antibiotics. Innovation includes improving the efficacy of current drugs and replenishing effectiveness by developing new drugs. In this paper, I assess the relative benefits and costs of these two approaches to maintaining our ability to treat infections.</jats:p>

<jats:p>A global map of health R&amp;D activity would improve the coordination of research and help to match limited resources with public health priorities, such as combating antimicrobial resistance. The challenges of R&amp;D mapping are large because there are few standards for research classification and governance and limited capacity to report on R&amp;D data, especially in low-income countries. Nevertheless, based on developments in semantic classification, and with better reporting of funded research though the Internet, it is now becoming feasible to create a global observatory for health R&amp;D.</jats:p>