Blantyre Malaria Project

The Blantyre Malaria Project, affiliated with the University of Malawi College of Medicine, undertakes malaria research through partner institutions in the USA, allowing US scientists to undertake research on malaria during the rainy season in Malawi (January to June). It is located in the Queen Elizabeth Teaching Hospital in Blantyre, Malawi, and works closely with the Malawi-Liverpool Wellcome Research Programme in the same hospital.

People:

• Terrie Taylor (MalariaGEN Investigator)

How the team is contributing to MalariaGEN

The Blantyre Malaria Project, together with the  Malawi-Liverpool Wellcome Clinical Research Programme, is recruiting children with severe malaria and ethnically matched controls for Consortial Project 1. They are also participating in Consortial Project 3.

The project is based in a designated research ward with 16 cots, adjacent to the paediatric ward of the national hospital. Malaria syndromes qualifying for inclusion include encephalopathy, severe anaemia and metabolic disorders. Controls were collected from the cord blood of newborn babies. The project is unique in that retinopathy data are collected that can improve the precision of specifying severe disease cases.

For Consortial Project 1 the team have contributed over 1800 cases of severe malaria, 3700 controls and 200 trios. These were collected over a period of 10 years, from 1997 to 2007, and include both archived and newly collected samples. The new samples were recruited from the catchment area for the Queen Elizabeth Central Hospital, including urban Blantyre and surrounding rural areas/districts where malaria is endemic.

For Consortial Project 3 around 100 samples are being selected from the pool of new cord blood samples.