Abstract

Doc number: 59

Abstract: Malaria is one of the most important tropical diseases that has caused devastation throughout the history of mankind. Malaria eradication programmes in the past have had many positive effects but failed to wipe out malaria from most tropical countries, including Sri Lanka. Encouraged by the impressive levels of reduction in malaria case numbers during the past decade, Sri Lanka has launched a programme to eliminate malaria by year 2014. This article reviews the historical milestones associated with the malaria eradication programme that failed subsequently and the events that led to the launch of the ongoing malaria elimination plans at national-level and its strategies that are operational across the entire country. The existing gaps in knowledge are also discussed together with the priority areas for research to fill in these gaps that are posing as challenges to the envisaged goal of wiping out malaria from this island nation.

Details

Title
On the road to eliminate malaria in Sri Lanka: lessons from history, challenges, gaps in knowledge and research needs
Author
Karunaweera, Nadira D; Galappaththy, Gawrie NL; Wirth, Dyann F
Pages
59
Publication year
2014
Publication date
2014
Publisher
BioMed Central
e-ISSN
14752875
Source type
Scholarly Journal
Language of publication
English
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1186/1475-2875-13-59
ProQuest document ID
1504673406
Copyright
© 2014 Karunaweera et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.