In honor of World Malaria Day, ASTMH asked some of our malaria expert members and colleagues what inspired them to specialize in malaria, what stands out in the fight against malaria and what will be the economic benefit of a malaria-free world. Other interviews in this series include: Past President Christopher V. Plowe, MD, MPH, FASTMH; Rear Adm. Timothy Ziemer of the President's Malaria Initiative; Philip Rosenthal, MD, FASTMH, Editor-in-Chief of American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene; Councilors Nicole Achee, PhD, ASTMH, Laurence Slutsker, MD, MPH, FASTMH, David A. Fidock, PhD; Stephanie Yanow, PhD, Assistant Scientific Program Chair; Capt. Judith E. Epstein, MD, of the Naval Medical Research Center; and Col. Robert M. Paris of the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research.
What situation or person inspired you to specialize in malaria?
As a young child, I became fascinated with encyclopedias and stamps. I learned about malaria and other tropical infectious diseases by turning every page of every encyclopedia set I could find in the local libraries, and even in the bookmobiles that would visit my neighborhood. At first, I only looked at pictures, but once I learned to read, I began to understand the picture captions and encyclopedia entries. As I collected stamps, I became aware of the worldwide effort to eradicate malaria, which was commemorated on stamps from virtually every country in 1962. I’ve since collected all of them, and continue to collect their first-day covers to this day.
Saving lives is what drives you, but what do you see as the economic benefit to eradicating malaria?
You’re nothing without your health. How can hard-working men and women improve their own lives, and the lives of their family members and friends, when they are listless, anemic and impoverished from malaria? Merely surviving and getting ahead in this world is difficult enough already without being chronically infected with malaria parasites. Eradicating malaria would lift this burden forever and help to level the world’s economic playing field.
In thinking about malaria control and elimination efforts in the last five years, what stands out most for you?
In Southeast Asia, we have learned a lot about the primary threat to these efforts, namely the emergence and spread of artemisinin-resistant parasites in Southeast Asia. What stands out the most for me, however, are the remaining knowledge gaps. In Cambodia alone, how are all the parasites becoming resistant to the frontline artemisinin combination therapy? Which of the dozens of Anopheles vectors is transmitting multidrug-resistant malaria? Which healthy individuals have extremely low parasitemias, and how are they contributing to malaria transmission? These are just a few of the unanswered questions at the moment.