Research On Malaria In Africa
African nations are considered to be some of the most financially backward nations of all time. Most of these nations are poverty laden and are swarming with diseases. Among all the diseases that inflict African nations Malaria is one of the responsible diseases that cause immense death every year. Malaria is that one disease that kills thousands on an annual basis. The research on Malaria us still on and this is one of the richest types of researches done here. Most biomedical labs and research centers in African nations are pretty much in a bad state but extreme emphasis is laid on the researches regarding Malaria here. This just shows the importance of eradicating this disease from these nations. As per surveys and other statistical researches it has been seen that a total of seventeen percent of papers on Malaria on the Medline databases and on the Science Citation Index are from an African nation. Thus in other words seventeen percent of Malaria research papers come from African nations.
The aforementioned statement is in stark contrast to all the papers done on biomedical researches. Africa's contribution to the biomedical research is only 1.2 percent. There are several collaborations with foreign nations have taken place inside the African research centers as regarding Malaria. A total of seventy nine percent or four out of five African papers regarding important research work on Malaria involve the authors and the works of researchers from both the US and Europe. Around eighty eight percent of the total grants were listed in the labs of African nations between 1993 and 1998. All these grants came from outside countries. There was some collaboration between African institutions as well. The report that was got from the Wellcome Trust is but a part of the MI or the Multilateral Initiative and this report aimed as to work as a baseline assessment of the capacity of research that took place in these African nations. MIM also aimed to get potential links and also improve all the efforts for both training as well as for research.
Training about Malaria researches is provided but most of such training sessions happen out of African nations. Furthermore such sessions of training isn't enough and is poorly monitored. All these factors need to be improved if African nations are to get rid of this disease completely. Special Program for Research and Training in Tropical Diseases is funded by the UN and spends a quarter of its annual budget of 28 million US Dollars is utilized on training. The Head of this institution Mr. Carlos Morel says that several types of improvements have been experience over the past couple of years. Circa 1997-98 the budget for training rose to 34 percent and a MIM task force was also organized. Local training did increase as well from 31 percent to a whooping 65 percent. Several research groups have also been formed in some of the poorest African countries so that the people from these nations also can be freed from the clutches of Malaria.
