ISGlobal Helps Draft WHO Severe Malaria Supplement

One of the main missions of the World Health Organisation (WHO) is to recommend health policies that will combat the world's most severe diseases. In September, the WHO Global Malaria Programme published a supplement on how to address the problem of severe malaria. The supplement was written by a committee of technical experts that included ISGlobal researcher Quique Bassat.

Published in a special issue of Tropical Medicine and International Health, the supplement presents a systematic review of the literature on severe malaria. It also outlines the consensus views on various aspects of severe malaria with the aim of promoting best practices and encouraging important research in this field. The WHO's severe malaria supplement is now in its fourth edition, having appeared previously in 1986, 1990 and 2000.

In 2012, malaria took the lives of around 627,000 people, mostly children under five years of age and pregnant women in sub-Saharan Africa. The same year, a much larger number of people developed severe malaria but recovered thanks to proper diagnosis and treatment. The aim of the new WHO supplement is to improve the prevention, identification and treatment of severe malaria.

The full text is available in PDF format at the following link:

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/tmi.12313_2/pdf