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Malaria World has become a broad and wonderful forum for exchanging information on malaria, with about 7,000 members, coming into 2013. And lately there have been many items relevant to the big fight against malaria in Africa. These items have come from all over the world; the latest exciting one being the contribution by the people from Southern Africa who are showing us the way.

But there are important groups who are noticeable for their absence.

Epidemiological Nugget Number Two........Many malaria programs are slowly converting to better diagnostic methods for reporting the prevalence of malaria. However the numbers have to be carefully analyzed, because of the artifacts caused by changes in False Positivity of the better diagnostic tests. The most common diagnostic method used in Africa - and reported through WHO - is called Clinical Diagnosis. This method, relying on the clinical judgement of the health care worker, has a False Positivity Rate of about 80%.

Epidemiological Nugget Number One: Bednets are avoided by adults, especially during the hot and humid malaria season.......However infants cannot escape their mothers protective care, thus infants usually sleep under bednets, even though no one else in the family does.........Now - what happens when groups like PMI report their success in terms of reduced Infant Mortality, or prevalence of malaria among infants?..........It is no surprise that Infant Mortality drops because the infants are sleeping under bednets.

We are all sure in - our hearts - that suppression of malaria in Africa will improve the rate of economic development. Recently this hope was formalized in an African Futures Brief by Moyer and Emde at the Pardee Center of the University of Denver in their Brief #5 published in November. Their projections indicated that driving the malaria prevalence down to zero in Africa by 2025 would by 2050 result in an increase in income of $30 per year per person, compared to the current average for Africa in 2010 of only $1.25.