’Preventive malaria treatment improves children’s performance at school’

UAntwerp involved in large-scale international research to be published in The Lancet.

School-aged children who are given anti-malaria drugs preventively are only half as likely to catch the disease. And that’s not all: their risk of anaemia decreases by 15%, and their school performance improves. All this has been demonstrated by international research in which the University of Antwerp was also involved.

An elderly couple in Kampenhout, a municipality near Brussels Airport, died from malaria at the beginning of October. Though this mosquito-borne disease is extremely uncommon at this latitude, the World Health Organisation (WHO) estimates that it kills 400,000 people every year. High-risk areas include Africa, Central and South America, and South-East Asia. ...