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This is Scientific American's 60-Second Science. I'm Cynthia Graber. This will just take a minute.

April 25th was World Malaria¹ Day. The mosquito-borne disease is still one of the biggest killers³ in developing countries with a death toll⁴ of a million each year. But there’s an international push for a multi-front war on malaria, ranging from cheap and effective bed netting to the development of a vaccine⁵. The Gates Foundation has bet on vaccines⁶, but is also funding less conventional scientific approaches.

For example, a scientist at Colorado State University is working on making human blood a mosquito killer². Some drugs already distributed in the developing world to combat parasites⁸ such as hookworm are also toxic⁹ to the malaria-transmitting Anopheles mosquito. The mosquito bites, and the drug in the blood kills it. Researchers are investigating how this approach could be applied¹⁰ and expanded.

Another team from the University of Washington discovered that the malaria parasite⁷ in Asia outsmarts drugs and develops resistance much more quickly than in other parts of the world. They’ve been investigating the mechanism¹¹ of action to be able to figure out a way to block that resistance.

There is hope: in recent years, the Maldives, Tunisia and the United Arab Emirates have eliminated malaria.

Thanks for the minute. For Scientific American's 60-Second Science. I'm Cynthia Graber.