Burnet and the 'Big Three'

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Fight against Malaria

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Burnet and Malaria

Children are especially vulnerable to malaria, one of The ‘Big Three’ infectious diseases, with one child dying from malaria every 30 seconds somewhere in the world.

The malaria parasite is transmitted by mosquito bite and remains one of the most devastating diseases of poor tropical countries causing one million deaths and 400 million infections each year.

For Australians, the issue of malaria often only becomes topical when we are considering travelling to Asia or Africa and are advised to visit our doctor for preventative treatment.

Unfortunately, millions of people living in poor communities do not have access to such preventative treatments and nearly 10% of the world’s population will suffer from this life-threatening disease in any given year.

What Burnet is doing…

• Our scientists in the Gilson/Crabb laboratory recently discovered a potential Achilles heel in the malaria parasite. This discovery, which was published in the prestigious journal Nature, will now provide an opportunity for drugs to be developed to target this part of the parasite, which hopefully will soon ultimately prevent this disease.
• The Malaria Research Group performs laboratory-based research on the parasite ‘Plasmodium falciparum’, which causes the most deadly type of human malaria. They are specifically trying to discover how the malaria parasite reads the blood cell surface and then makes the decision to invade it.
• Developing treatments that could reduce the severity of the malaria disease or even eliminate the parasite altogether.
• Our malaria work extends from basic laboratory research through molecular epidemiology to large field trials of anti-malarial drugs in children in Papua New Guinea, all aimed at providing evidence for more effective control and treatment by discovering new drugs and in particular, a vaccine.