With the kind of weather changes that we experience each year due to global warming, people including children are being more and more prone to various kinds of diseases. Out of which malaria is a very dangerous disease and has also resulted in many deaths across the world. But results of a trial has shown that there's a mosquito-killing drug that can reduce malaria in children by 20%.
During the malaria transmission season, repeated mass administration of this drug called ivermectin, every three weeks can reduce malaria cases, shows the trial published in The Lancet journal. This drug is mostly used to cure parasite infections from river blindness and scabies to head lice.
Brian D Foy, researcher from the Colorado State University in the US says, “Ivermectin reduces new cases of malaria by making a person’s blood lethal to the mosquitoes who bite them, killing mosquitoes and therefore reducing the likelihood of infection of others.” He also continued to say, “Because ivermectin has a unique mode of action compared to other malaria control insecticides and antimalarial drugs, it could be used alongside drugs that treat malaria to combat residual transmission of the disease.”
Deaths due to malaria have decreased by 48% globally since 2000 and there are fewer endemic regions.
