Rafael Pardo, director of the Fundacin BBVA, and Pedro Alonso, coordinator of the Centre of International Health of Hospital Clnic de Barcelona, have presented in the Fundacin BBVA the results of a research project that will be published in the August issue of the Journal of Infectious Diseases on the efficiency and safety of the intermittent preventive treatment in Mozambican children of less than a year with sulfadoxine-pyrimethamine, a common and cheap anti-malarian. This work, that will be published in the prestigious journal of the American Society for the Infectious Disease, was presented in a press conference that had the participation of Clara Menndez, also responsible for this work, and Eusebio Macete, the first signatory.
This research, promoted by the Fundacin BBVA and the Hospital Clnic in Manhia (Mozambique), demonstrates that the intermittent treatment with sulphadoxin-pirimetamine (SP) is safe, well tolerated and reduces by 22.2% the cases of clinical malaria in children under one year of age.
The project is also assessing, in a thousand of pregnant volunteers, the preventive value of the administration of the anti-malaria intermittent treatment on mother anaemia and parasitemia, and on the premature birth and low weight of newborns in mothers with malaria.
Malaria is one of the major causes of death in the world. It is estimated that it causes about 3,000 deaths every day and that more than 300 million people in the world are afflicted by severe malaria. This disease, with an especially high incidence among children, is responsible for 25-30% of deaths of children under five years of age in sub-Saharan Africa. To reduce the impact of this disease, it is indispensable to promote the development and eradicate poverty among the most vulnerable populations. The joint project of the Fundacin BBVA and Hospital Clnic de Barcelona has the aim to fight the disease and poverty in developing
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Contact: lex Argem
aargemi@clinic.ub.es
34-93-227-5700
IDIBAPS - Institut d'Investigacions Biomdiques August Pi i Sunyer
14-Jul-2006