by GOZDE ZORLU
Reducing the incidence of malaria could also drastically reduce the number of deaths from bacterial infections among children in Africa, a study has found.
“Children who are protected from malaria are less likely to catch bacterial infections. It therefore means that controlling malaria will give an additional benefit,” Anthony Scott, the lead author and a researcher at the KEMRI-Wellcome Trust Research Programme, in Kenya, told SciDev.Net
Invasive bacterial diseases, such as pneumonia, meningitis and sepsis, are a major cause of illness and death among children in Africa, with mortality in Kenya as high as 22 per cent of those infected.
The study, published in The Lancet this week (7 September), found that children with a single copy of the sickle cell gene, which offers protection against malaria, are also protected against bacterial infections.
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