HAS the World Health Organization underestimated the world’s malaria problem? By as much as 50 per cent, according to researchers in Kenya. Not true the WHO itself insists. At stake is the credibility of the WHO’s anti-malaria programmes.
In this week’s Nature (vol 434, p 214), Bob Snow and colleagues from the Kenya Medical Research Institute in Nairobi calculate that there were 515 million new cases of malaria worldwide in 2002. This is almost double what they quote as the WHO’s official figure of 273 million cases. Snow claims that international efforts to control malaria are being damaged because…
