Estimating the hidden magnitude of the malaria community burden

Abstract

The second push for global malaria eradication, launched more than a decade ago,1 has motivated a renewed interest in the understanding of malaria transmission, and in the strategies required to interrupt it. In this respect, in order to eliminate malaria from a given geographical area, rapid detection and treatment of the clinical cases is rarely sufficient. In settings where transmission intensity is sufficiently high, populations exposed to continuous infective mosquito bites progressively develop a tolerance to malaria infections during the first few years of their life. This tolerance protects them against malaria disease, but not necessarily against the infection itself.