New way to stop falciparum malaria transmission

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By Neena Bhandari

SYDNEY, 26.12.19 (SciDev.Net):  Australian scientists have successfully blocked the deadliest malaria parasite —- Plasmodium falciparum — in its transmission stage, paving the way for developing preventative therapies to stop the spread of the disease.

Lead researcher Justin Boddey from the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research and University of Melbourne says, “We have built on our previous studies, where we identified in the P. falciparum parasite an enzyme called plasmepsin V, an enzyme essential for the parasite to grow inside red blood cells. We showed that if you inhibit the enzyme’s activity then you can kill the parasites as they are growing in red blood cells.”

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Samoa measles death toll rises amid vaccine scare

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By Neena Bhandari

Sydney, 03.12.2019 (SciDev.Net): Fifty-three people, including 48 children under the age of four years, have died of measles in the small Pacific island nation of Samoa, which is facing the worst outbreak of this highly contagious disease driven by low vaccination levels.

Samoa’s Prime Minister Tuilaepa Lupesoliai Neioti Aiono Sailele Malielegaoi announced on Monday (2 December) that all branches of government, except water and electricity departments, will be closed on Thursday and Friday this week and civil servants will be redeployed to help in the mass immunisation drive to vaccinate everybody up to the age of 60 years.

The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates Samoa’s total population immunity to be as low as 31 per cent. To prevent measles outbreaks, it is recommended that countries should aim to achieve and sustain at least 95 per cent immunisation coverage.

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Global disasters linked to warming Indo-Pacific seas

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By Neena Bhandari

SYDNEY, 29.11.19 (SciDev.Net): East Asian floods, African droughts and the frequent California fires may be linked to the rapid warming of the Indo-Pacific Ocean that impacts global rainfall patterns and corresponding weather, says a new study published on 27 November in Nature.

Each year, weather variability at sub-seasonal to seasonal timescales costs the global economy over US$2 trillion with costs to the US alone amounting to US$700 billion.

“The Indo-Pacific warm pool, a region between the eastern Indian Ocean and western Pacific Ocean, with ocean temperatures generally warmer than 28 degrees Celsius, has been warming since the 1900s, but during 1981—2018, it expanded at a rate of about 400,000 square kilometres per year — the size of Thailand or Spain,” says Roxy Mathew Koll, lead author and climate scientist at the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology, Pune.

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