A Review on the Evidence Base on the Management of Malaria

Abstract

Malaria has been one of the most important infectious diseases of humans for millennia. An estimated 3.3 billion people approximately one-half of the world’s population living in 109 countries—are at risk of contracting this serious and of ten life-threatening diseases. In India the National Malaria Eradication Programme (NMEP), started in 1956, achieved near complete disappearance of the disease in 1960s (from 75 million in 1950s to 0.1 million in 1960s). Malaria accounts for ∼250 million clinical cases and nearly 1 million deaths each year, the great majority of which occur in children younger than 5 years of age and in young, pregnant women. Due to the high specificity of P. falciparum, P. vivax, P. ovale, P. malariae, P. knowlesi to the human host and to the fact that clinical studies in human are not always feasible, our knowledge about this syndrome mainly comes from autopsy studies which can only give us a limited view this deadly syndrome. The current study showed that traditional knowledge is still playing an important role in the treatment of malaria. A well-developed treatment regimen including the artemisinins as a potent antimalarial and other safety preventive measures have played a major role in reducing global burden of malaria over the years. About 54% of the medicinal plants in the survey have been reported as an anti-malarial plant in the literature search. The current review focuses on clinical drug candidates with activity against more than one stages of the malarial parasite life cycle.

Keywords: Malaria, millennia; Plasmodium, National malaria eradication programme, artemisinins antimalarial therapy.

Cite this article

Shabani, Savita Kumari. A Review on the Evidence Base on the Management of Malaria. Research & Reviews: A Journal of Pharmacology. 2019; 9(1): 1–11p.