A ray of hope in the struggle against malaria Video

From parasite to mosquito and from mosquito to human host. This about sums up the transmission process for one of the most serious diseases afflicting the third world: malaria. Feared by everyone and with little in the way of effective treatment against it, malaria leads to nearly one million deaths every year, and in most cases those afflicted with it are children aged between 1 and 5. Lluís Ribas, researcher at ICREA (Catalan Institute for Research and Advanced Studies) and head of the Genetic Translation Laboratory at the IRB Barcelona (Barcelona Institute for Biomedical Research), tells us how the Mephitis project, which he himself is co-ordinating and in which seven other research groups from around the world are taking part, will help speed up the development of new effective, anti-malarial drugs.