Research published in The FEBS Journal may help overcome challenges to the treatment of malaria – a tropical disease caused by infection of red blood cells with Plasmodium parasites, which are transmitted through infected mosquito bites. The research is based on a strategy that targets an enzyme specific to the parasite, Falcipain-2 (FP2), which is essential for parasite survival and growth within the host.
FP2 allows the parasite to digest human haemoglobin so that it can replicate inside red blood cells, which leads to severe malaria symptoms, including red blood cell destruction. Although FP2 is parasite-specific, it is highly similar to a class of human enzymes called cathepsins. This study therefore sought to determine the detailed structural and functional characterizations of FP2 so that it could be targeting without harming cathepsins.
Previously, the researchers identified that polyethylene glycol (PEG) can form stable interactions with FP2. In this latest study, they focused on how different PEG molecules bind to FP2 and its target, haemoglobin. Their computational analyses identified a binding region, or pocket, of a particular PEG called PEG400 with FP2. This pocket exhibits minimal conservation in human cathepsins. PEG400 was capable of binding FP2 and affecting its digestion of haemoglobin.
“The findings pave the way for designing and incorporating new small molecule inhibitors of FP2 activity, suggesting opportunities for selective antimalarial therapies with a cumulative benefit of reducing off-target specificity,” said corresponding author Sampa Biswas, PhD, who conducted this work while at the Saha Institute of Nuclear Physics, in India, and is currently at InBOL (Indian Barcode of Life) Health Care.
Africa CDC and the WHO are working jointly to strengthen coordination by activating an Incident Management Support Team (IMST), building on the successful model used during the mpox and cholera responses
Ebola on a cell. Credit: NIH/NIAID
The Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC), acting on the recommendations of its Emergency Consultative Group (ECG), has officially declared the ongoing Bundibugyo ebolavirus disease outbreak affecting the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and Uganda a Public Health Emergency of Continental Security (PHECS).
This declaration, under Article 3, Paragraph F of the Africa CDC Statute, empowers the organisation to lead and coordinate responses to significant public health emergencies across the continent. The statute mandates Africa CDC to “coordinate and support Member States in health emergency responses, particularly those declared a PHECS or Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC), as well as health promotion and disease prevention through health systems strengthening.”
The declaration follows extensive consultations at political, strategic and technical levels, including consultations with H.E. Mahmoud Ali Youssouf, the African Union Commission chairperson; H.E. Cyril Ramaphosa, President of South Africa and the African Union Champion for Pandemic Preparedness, Prevention and Response (PPPR); and consultations with Member States affected or at risk. This declaration was built on recommendations from the ECG, chaired by Professor Salim Abdool Karim, which reviewed the evolving epidemiological situation, regional risks, response capacities, and the implications of the confirmed Bundibugyo ebolavirus strain.
As of May 18, 2026, about 395 suspected cases and 106 associated deaths have been reported in the DRC (mainly in the Mongwalu, Rwampara, and Bunia Health Zones) and in Kampala, Uganda, where two cases and one death have been reported so far.
Africa CDC is deeply concerned about the high risk of regional spread due to intense cross-border population movement, mining-related mobility, insecurity in affected areas, weak infection prevention and control measures, community deaths occurring outside formal healthcare systems, and the proximity of affected areas to Rwanda and South Sudan.
H.E. Dr Jean Kaseya, Director General of Africa CDC, emphasised the urgency of coordinated continental action: “Today, we declare this PHECS to mobilise our institutions, our collective will, and our resources to act swiftly and decisively. The confirmation of the Bundibugyo ebolavirus in interconnected countries reminds us once again that Africa’s health security is indivisible. We must act early, act together, and act based on science.”
Dr Kaseya highlighted that the declaration would strengthen regional coordination, facilitate rapid mobilisation of financial and technical resources, reinforce surveillance and laboratory systems, support the deployment of emergency responders, and accelerate preparedness activities in neighbouring countries considered at heightened risk of transmission.
He further stressed the importance of an Africa-led and partner-supported response: “This outbreak is occurring in one of the most complex operational environments on the continent, marked by insecurity, population mobility, fragile health systems, and limited medical countermeasures for the Bundibugyo ebolavirus disease. We call upon our Member States and international partners to stand together with Africa CDC, the World Health Organization (WHO), UNICEF and the affected countries to prevent further spread and protect our populations.”
Africa CDC and the WHO are working jointly to strengthen coordination by activating an Incident Management Support Team (IMST), building on the successful model used during the mpox and cholera responses under the “4 Ones” principle: one team, one plan, one budget, and one monitoring framework.
Africa CDC has already deployed multidisciplinary experts, including specialists in epidemiology, infection prevention and control, laboratory systems, risk communication, logistics and emergency coordination, and has internally mobilised US$2 million to support the continental response.
The declaration also comes amid growing concerns about the limited availability of validated vaccines and therapeutics for the Bundibugyo ebolavirus disease. Africa CDC is therefore working closely with various partners to assess available medical countermeasures and accelerate operational research and evidence generation efforts to inform outbreak response strategies.
Professor Karim, chair of the ECG, noted: “The ECG carefully reviewed the epidemiological evidence, regional risk profile, and operational realities surrounding this outbreak. The interconnected nature of transmission between DRC and Uganda, combined with the challenges posed by insecurity and cross-border movement, requires urgent coordinated continental action.”
Ebola is a severe and often fatal illness transmitted through direct contact with bodily fluids of infected persons, contaminated materials, or deceased individuals infected with the virus. Early detection, rapid isolation and care, contact tracing, infection prevention and control, community engagement, and safe and dignified burials remain essential to interrupt transmission.
Africa CDC will continue to provide regular updates as additional epidemiological, laboratory, and sequencing information becomes available.
Hantaviruses are not new. They have circulated for decades in rodent populations, particularly in rats and mice. Humans can become infected if they are bitten or scratched by a rodent or by inhaling aerosolised particles. These are tiny bits of rodent urine, faeces or saliva floating through the air that are contaminated by the virus.
Infections between humans can be prevented by closely observing people who were exposed and isolating those who are sick. This limits the risk of further spread, as transmission generally requires close contact.
However, as an interdisciplinary group of scientists working on emerging infectious diseases, we argue that hantaviruses might pose a much bigger threat to African countries than currently known. We are concerned for three reasons.
Firstly, diagnostic testing capacity across much of the African continent remains limited. This is a real issue. In many rural settings, under-resourced diagnostic services may overlook sporadic cases. This may allow hantaviruses to spread without anyone noticing. Our medical expertise tells us that larger outbreaks are likely to be recognised eventually. But these delays in diagnosing the cases will slow down effective control measures.
Secondly, monitoring systems are lacking and likely to miss infections in wildlife and in human beings.
Thirdly, climate change and accelerating changes to the way land is used could increase the risk of spread of hantaviruses from animals to people. This is because global change may increase rodent populations and bring rats and mice into closer contact with humans.
For example, modelling studies in the Americas found broad zones with enzootic circulation (where an animal community always carries a certain disease). This is because many rodent species tend to live across a wide variety of environments where humans are also found. As human and rodent populations increase, the likelihood of encounters also increases. Some rodent species flourish in habitats shaped by humans or even in buildings. This poses a high risk for transmission of pathogens.
As a typical zoonosis (animal disease that spreads to humans), hantaviruses must be seen as a One Health issue. One Health is an approach that understands and takes into account the close connection between human, animal and ecosystem health. Hantaviruses cannot simply be seen as a clinical management or infection control issue.
It is really important that African governments set up better monitoring of wildlife so that they can detect when and where animal viruses like this are likely to spill over into the human population. This will help stop larger outbreaks of hantavirus, which can be deadly.
Weak surveillance may be allowing hantaviruses to spread unnoticed
In Africa, scientists have discovered several hantaviruses, including Sangassou virus in Guinea in small mammal species, such as rodents. More recently, hantaviruses were found in shrews and bats too – not just in rats and mice as previously thought.
The fact that hantaviruses may circulate in a much wider range of animals and environments than scientists originally realised makes their ecology and potential spillover risk into humans more complex.
One of the current problems facing Africa is that there hasn’t been enough research into the ecology of hantaviruses and which animals host them. There are very few genetic sequences available that would allow scientists to analyse interactions between viruses and hosts and the possible risk this poses to humans.
Combined with limited monitoring of the disease, Africa is experiencing a hantavirus surveillance gap. This gap needs to be closed because hantavirus infections and disease may be more widespread than many health systems assume.
Climate change and land use
Climate and land-use change influence rodent populations which host hantaviruses, and increase human-rodent contact. Hantavirus boomed in the US between 1993 and 1995 because El Niño brought very heavy rains and warmer winters, which led to a bumper crop in seeds that rodents eat. This improved nutrition led to a massive increase in rodent numbers. Outbreaks elsewhere have likewise been linked to weather phenomena.
More rodents means more of them seeking food and shelter in the vicinity of humans. More competition for resources leads to more aggressive behaviour between animals and biting transmits the virus. Because El Niño episodes are predicted to become more frequent and intense in future, hantaviruses are likely to affect African countries more and more.
In Africa, land-use change is likely to play an increasingly important role in hantavirus ecology and emergence, as was the case with Lassa fever (another virus spread by rodents) in Nigeria and Guinea. Deforestation, agricultural expansion, mining activities, road construction and urban growth are transforming natural habitats across many regions of the continent. These environmental changes can force populations of rodents, shrews and bats to move into farms, villages, peri-urban settings and water sources used by people.
When humans expand into previously undisturbed habitats in search of land, food, or economic opportunity, this also creates a new opportunity (known as an ecological interface) where hantaviruses and other zoonotic pathogens may circulate more easily between wildlife reservoirs and humans.
What needs to happen next
When people and wildlife come into close contact, viruses like Andes can jump from animals and begin transmitting between humans. Hantaviruses can cause severe human disease and this is likely far more widespread than currently recognised.
Fortunately, the risk of Andes hantavirus spreading beyond the cruise ship passengers and crew and their close contacts is small. But Sars coronavirus and monkeypox virus are recent examples that some zoonotic viruses have the potential to spread rapidly and widely among humans.
Virological and ecological studies of wildlife reservoirs and surveillance of possible hantavirus infection and disease in humans in endemic regions are needed. This requires specialised diagnostic tools combined with samples from rodents in areas where humans have disturbed their habitat and have since experienced unexplained febrile illness (acute high fevers).
Once there is firm evidence of human disease, scientists and medical professionals will be able to argue for the widespread use of diagnostic tests. The results of these tests will determine how much of a threat the virus poses to human health.
Genetic sequencing and data-sharing partnerships can then help connect animal, environmental and human signals into a clearer picture of risk.
The greatest gap currently may be the failure to identify where, how, and under which environmental conditions spillover events occur before outbreaks emerge.
Strengthening surveillance to identify high-risk interfaces, emerging transmission zones, and drivers of spillover is therefore essential to anticipate potentially pathogenic African hantaviruses before larger outbreaks occur.
“Hantavirus is a rare zoonotic virus, which means it’s carried by animals – in this case, rodents,” she explains. “Humans typically become infected when they breathe in particles from the urine, faeces or saliva of infected rodents.” Rare cases of human-to-human spread have been reported.
The virus isn’t new and does not spread in the same way as more familiar respiratory infections such as influenza or COVID-19. Most hantavirus infections occur after environmental exposure (in endemic regions), particularly in enclosed spaces where rodent droppings, urine or saliva have contaminated dust. Activities such as sweeping dry droppings in garages, sheds, storage rooms or other poorly ventilated areas may increase the risk of inhaling contaminated particles.
The current outbreak has drawn attention because it’s been confirmed as the Andes variant of hantavirus. The Andes virus is unusual because it is the only hantavirus variant documented to spread between people. However, Prof Ueckermann emphasises that this form of transmission remains rare and appears to require prolonged, close contact.
“To date, human-to-human spread of hantavirus is extremely rare, and has been described only with the Andes variant and with prolonged close contact, such as people sharing a household,” she says. “There is no evidence of community-wide spread of hantavirus of the kind seen with COVID-19.”
Previous cases of the Andes virus suggest that transmission is associated with close, sustained exposure rather than brief or casual contact. Reported situations include household exposure, being in contact with an intimate partner, caregiving activities or spending extended periods in enclosed spaces in close proximity to an infected person. This distinction is important in interpreting public concern about travel and shared public spaces.
“Based on what we currently know about the Andes virus, the risk to fellow passengers on a flight appears to be low,” Prof Ueckermann says. “Simply being on the same aircraft, walking past an infected person or sitting at a distance would be considered very low risk. Sitting next to a sick person on a long-haul flight may plausibly carry a low risk, while the highest risk would be repeated close contact, such as caring for someone, touching or sharing cups.”
Prof Ueckermann adds that the public health response to the recent outbreak has been appropriate and reassuring. This has included early sequencing of the virus to confirm that it is the Andes variant, monitoring of close contacts and a coordinated approach to managing those affected.
In South Africa, hantavirus is not considered a major public health concern. Confirmed human cases are extremely rare, and the current cases being managed in the country are linked to exposure outside South Africa, not local transmission. Prof Ueckermann stresses that South Africa is not experiencing a hantavirus outbreak.
Symptoms may initially resemble influenza and can include fever, body aches, headache and abdominal pain. In most cases, especially during winter in South Africa, such symptoms are far more likely to be caused by common seasonal infections. However, anyone with a known exposure to rodent-contaminated environments or having had close contact with a confirmed case should seek medical advice if symptoms develop. Urgent care is needed if symptoms progress to shortness of breath, tightness in the chest, rapid breathing, dizziness, confusion, bluish lips or sudden worsening after a flu-like illness.
Practical prevention remains important. People should avoid sweeping rodent droppings, and instead spray the droppings with disinfectant or diluted bleach, allow the area to soak, wipe it up with paper towels and wash their hands thoroughly afterwards. They should also ventilate enclosed spaces before cleaning, wear gloves and a mask. Food and waste should be stored securely, and rodent entry points should be sealed.
“Hantavirus is a rare but potentially serious rodent-borne infection, with very rare person-to-person spread,” Prof Ueckermann says. “The appropriate response is evidence-based awareness, sensible hygiene and rodent control – not panic.”
Remaining passengers from the cruise ship MV Hondius, where an outbreak of hantavirus occurred, have now been evacuated after docking in Tenerife. So far, only three fatalities are reported, although the number of known infected cases has risen. Health organisations around the world are extending their support.
In a media briefing, Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO Director-General said that eight cases have been reported so far, including three deaths. Five of the 8 cases have been confirmed as hantavirus.
According to the World Health Organization, the hantavirus in this case is the Andes virus, which is the only one capable of human transmission, albeit in an extremely limited fashion. Prolonged and close contact is required, as would happen on board a cruise ship.
Describing the situation, Dr Tedros said, “While this is a serious incident, WHO assesses the public health risk as low.” He noted that given the incubation period, “it’s possible that more cases may be reported.” Among medical support offerd, the WHO has distributed test kits from Argentina to five countries to support testing.
Prior to this incident, the most serious outbreak of Andes hantavirus was in Epuyén, Argentina, in late 2018 to early 2019 with 34 confirmed cases and 11 deaths (case fatality rate ~32%). Previously, very little was known about the Andes strain, explained Dr Gustavo Palacios, a microbiologist at Mount Sinai in New York, speaking to CNN.
“There is very limited experience handling this virus,” said Palacios, who had helped to trace how the virus spread. The study of the outbreak was published in 2020 in the New England Journal of Medicine.
“Probably we are having less than – I don’t know, I’m giving you a number, just for a ballpark number – 300 cases in history” of human to human transmission of Andes virus and about 3000 Andes cases overall, Palacios said.
Based on research into the Epuyén outbreak, Palacios said there seems to be only a roughly day-long window for transmission of the Andes virus of about a day, when patients first develop a fever.
Index case identified
The patients likely picked up the virus while they were on shore, before boarding the ship. The New York Post reports that Dutch ornithologist, Leo Schilperoord, was patient zero for the hantavirus outbreak. Along with his wife Maria Schilperoord, he visited a landfill outside of the city of Ushuaia to seek out a rare bird – birdwatchers frequent the landfill due to the number of birds flocking there. Argentinian authorities believe that it was there that he came in contact with long-tailed pygmy rats, inhaling particles of its faeces, which carries the Andes strain.
After boarding the ship with 112 others – including many other birdwatchers and scientists – he fell ill with diarrhoea and abdominal pain on April 6 and dying five days later. His wife was flying back with his body but collapsed when connecting in Johannesburg, and died in hospital the next day. Meanwhile, the UK man who was in intensive care in a Johannesburg hospital is now making a recovery.
An outbreak of hantavirus on a cruise ship has left three people dead, with another person in intensive care in Johannesburg, the BBC reports. The ship, MV Hondius, departed from Argentina and had completed its cruise in Cape Verde.
Department of Health spokesperson Foster Mohale told the BBC that there were 150 passengers of various nationalities aboard the vessel.
The three victims were all of Dutch nationality. The first, a 70-year old man, suddenly fell ill, developing fever, headache, abdominal pain and diarrhoea, Mohale reported. The man died at the UK island of St Helena. The second, the man’s 69-year old wife, was evacuated to a Johannesburg hospital but also died there. The body of the third victim is awaiting repatriation, along with a guest “closely associated” with them. A 69-year-old man from the UK remains severely ill in a Johannesburg hospital.
Two crewmembers are also understood to be seriously ill but medical authorities in Cape Verde have not given them authority to disembark.
Hantaviruses are a family of viruses spread mainly by rodents, and can cause serious illnesses and death. These viruses cause diseases like hantavirus pulmonary syndrome (HPS) and haemorrhagic fever with renal syndrome (HFRS). About half of patients will develop abdominal symptoms similar to the first passenger who dies.
Speaking to the BBC, microbiologist Siouxsie Wiles speculates on the possibility that additional cases will develop among the ship’s passengers and crew.
“With this incubation period are we going to see more people coming down with the disease in the next days and weeks?”
New studies reveal how Clostridioides difficile behaves inside the body
Clostridioides difficile. Credit: CDC
Bacterial infections caused by Clostridioides difficile are a serious and persistent problem for patients and hospitals alike. The bacterium can cause severe diarrhoea, life-threatening inflammation of the colon, and recurring illness that dramatically reduces quality of life – especially for older adults, who face the highest risk of complications and death.
C. diff remains difficult to control for a combination of factors. The bacterium survives many disinfectants, allowing it to easily spread in health care settings, where it is the most common cause of infectious diarrhoea. After entering the body through the mouth, the bacterium travels to the colon, where it colonises and starts releasing toxins that damage tissues. About one in nine patients treated for C. diff will develop another infection within weeks or months, often unpredictably, with the risk of a repeat infection increasing from there. And some strains of the bacterium have become resistant to the first-line antibiotics used to treat it.
Researchers at Tufts University School of Medicine are tackling these challenges by studying C. diff at multiple levels, from how individual bacterial cells behave inside the gut to the molecular switches that help them survive and spread. Together, these approaches are revealing hidden vulnerabilities that could lead to better ways to prevent new or recurrent infections, predict severe disease, or stop the bacterium before it causes harm.
Watching Infections Unfold, Cell by Cell
“C. diff is everywhere,” said Aimee Shen, an associate professor of molecular biology and microbiology at Tufts School of Medicine. “But infections can look very different from one patient to the next.”
Some people carry the bacterium without ever getting sick. Others develop severe, life-disrupting illness – typically after being treated for another illness with antibiotics that wipe out beneficial gut bacteria that may have otherwise warded off an infection.
“A bad C. diff infection is reportedly incredibly painful, like glass shards moving through your intestine,” said Shen. “And there’s some research that shows that C. diff toxins actually act on neurons in the gut.”
To better understand why the spectrum of disease severity varies so widely, Shen, Tufts’ School of Medicine professor Carol Kumamoto, and their collaborators developed a new imaging approach that lets them track what individual C. diff cells were doing inside the body. They applied fluorescent “reporters” – microscopic glowing tags that mark gene activity – to track which genes are turned on in individual C. diff cells in tissue samples from infected mice. This allowed them to see where the bacteria hide in the gut, which cells switched on toxin genes, and how activity differed from cell to cell during infection.
Their study, recently published in Nature Communications, showed that C. diff spread throughout the entire gut, including closer to the gut’s vulnerable lining than previously thought.
However, toxin production didn’t depend on the bacteria’s location and only some cells made toxins at any given time. Shen said this suggests that disease may be driven by a small, hard-to-detect subpopulation rather than simply how many bacteria are present.
The imaging study also revealed other unexpected findings, including that a strain of toxin-overproducing bacteria formed unusually long, filament-like shapes in the gut during the acute phase of infection. “These were not observed in later stages of an infection,” said Shen. “This suggests that bacteria producing the most destructive amounts of toxins may be particularly susceptible to certain stresses encountered during infection.”
By illuminating how infections unfold cell by cell in this way, the new imaging method may provide information that could someday help doctors predict which patients are likely to develop severe or recurrent disease. It also may help researchers develop new treatments that better target harmful subpopulations of C. diff bacteria while sparing beneficial gut microbes.
Finding a Potential Weak Spot
One reason C. diff spreads so effectively is its ability to form tough, dormant spores that act like microscopic seeds sealed in armour. Transmitted via trace amounts of faecal matter, these spores can survive for long periods, stubbornly resisting heat and many common disinfectants, including hand sanitisers. Once ingested, C. diff spores germinate – springing back to life and thus able to spawn toxins.
This is a pivotal moment scientists hope to block.
Shen’s lab has long studied how the bacterium recognises it has reached the right place to reawaken. Most spore-forming bacteria rely on the same standard molecular sensors, but C. diff uses a different system. Its spores respond to bile acids found in digestive fluids, along with other signals that together flip the bacterium’s switch from dormancy to active growth.
In a study recently published in PLOS Biology, Shen, Tufts’ School of Medicine professor Ekaterina Heldwein, and their collaborators identified a key part of that switch. They found that two proteins, CspC and CspA, lock together to form a signalling hub that helps spores interpret environmental cues. By mapping the structure of this protein pair and testing how it functions, the team showed the combined complex controls how sensitive spores are to germination signals.
“It’s like we’ve identified a central control panel for deciding when the spore comes back to life,” Shen says. “If we understand how that panel works, scientists someday may be able to design new drugs to keep it switched off.”
Searching for More Precise Targets
Together, the studies offer a clearer picture of both how C. diff causes disease and when it becomes dangerous.
Now, in addition to continuing their work on single-cell imaging and spore germination, Shen’s lab is working to uncover other hidden rules that govern C. diff’s behaviour. This includes how it reproduces using a division mechanism unlike those seen in other well-studied bacteria – the focus of a 2023 study published by Shen and collaborators in Nature Communications.
“The hope is the aspects that make C. diff unique – how it spreads, reproduces, and damages tissue – will allow researchers to design ways to target it much more specifically, while keeping the rest of the gut microbiome healthy and intact,” she said.
by Dr Taneshka Kruger, Project Manager: University of Pretoria Institute for Sustainable Malaria Control (UP ISMC) and Prof Tiaan de Jager, Director: UP ISMC
Eliminating malaria requires effort that goes far beyond our laboratories. It also happens in homes, villages and clinics, where gogos (grandmothers), mothers, young women and other citizen scientists play a vital role in prevention, early action and creating public awareness.
On 25 April, we commemorate World Malaria Day. This day is aimed at raising awareness about one of the world’s oldest and deadliest diseases, while also recognising the progress we’ve made in controlling and eliminating it. This year’s theme, ‘Driven to end malaria: Now we can. Now we must.”, is a reminder that success depends not only on medicine and science, but also on the people who protect families and strengthen communities every day.
Malaria remains a life-threatening disease transmitted by female Anopheles mosquitoes infected with the Plasmodium parasite. Globally, hundreds of millions of cases are reported each year, with the overwhelming burden falling on sub-Saharan Africa. The most vulnerable groups include pregnant women, children under five and older persons.
Why women and children face greater malaria risks
Pregnancy reduces a woman’s immunity to malaria, increasing the risk of infection and severe illness. Malaria during pregnancy can lead to maternal anaemia and serious complications such as miscarriage, premature birth, stillbirth and low birth weight. Low birth weight is one of the leading contributors to neonatal mortality and can affect a child’s long-term development.
Children under five continue to carry the heaviest malaria burden. In Africa, they account for roughly three-quarters of malaria-related deaths. Their immune systems are still developing, making prevention, early diagnosis and prompt treatment essential for survival.
The family members who spot danger first
In many rural communities, mothers – and especially grandmothers – are the backbone of family life. They shape household health practices, encourage clinic visits, and ensure children use preventative measures against malaria, such as sleeping under protective nets, where possible. Their lived experience gives them influence and trust, and when equipped with up-to-date malaria information they become powerful advocates for prevention. They are often the first to notice symptoms such as fever, fatigue or vomiting, and frequently help decide when and how medical care is sought.
Women also care for elderly family members, who may have weaker immune systems and be more vulnerable to complications from malaria. In areas where clinics are far away or transport is limited, their vigilance can be lifesaving.
Young women – whether students, entrepreneurs, community workers or volunteers – also play an increasingly important role in sharing reliable malaria information. They help bridge the gap between scientific knowledge and everyday community life, promoting practical actions such as:
Seeking early testing when symptoms such as fever appear
Reducing mosquito breeding sites through environmental management
Using preventative strategies to avoid mosquito bites
Consistent use of insecticide-treated bed nets where available
Attending antenatal clinics for intermittent preventive treatment in pregnancy (IPTp), in countries where these programmes are offered.
Through each of these actions and more, women’s leadership strengthens community resilience and promotes healthier futures.
Young women spreading life-saving knowledge
One of the most encouraging developments in rural malaria response is the rise of women citizen scientists. Through training programmes supported by research institutions, women from local communities are gaining skills to assist with field data collection and malaria surveillance.
In malaria research conducted by the University of Pretoria Institute for Sustainable Malaria Control in Limpopo’s Vhembe District, women citizen scientists have contributed by:
Engaging tribal authorities and communities about the purpose of the research and how communities can benefit
Collecting health data to assess the impact of malaria control methods on people and the environment
Collecting mosquito samples for vector surveillance and climate-related research
Gathering knowledge, attitude and practice data through surveys
Conducting interviews before and after interventions to assess effectiveness
Running focus groups to better understand community needs, behaviours and challenges.
By participating in field research, these women gain scientific skills while contributing directly to malaria control strategies. Their involvement helps ensure that research is done in local languages, reflects lived realities and leads to practical action communities can trust and use.
Just as importantly, this model expands women’s roles beyond traditional caregiving expectations. It positions them as knowledge holders, data contributors and active partners in scientific discovery. It also shows young girls in these communities that science is accessible, relevant and open to them.
From community member to citizen scientist
When mothers, gogos and young women understand the risks malaria poses – especially to pregnant women and children under five – they are better equipped to protect their families. When they are empowered as citizen scientists, they move from being passive recipients of health messaging to active drivers of change, contributing to local malaria elimination efforts. Their combined role as caregivers, educators and research partners strengthens both households and health systems.
On this World Malaria Day, we should recognise and honour the women who care for feverish children through the night, accompany pregnant daughters to clinics, share trusted advice with neighbours, and step into fields and villages as trained citizen scientists. By investing in women’s knowledge, leadership and participation at home, in communities and in science, we move closer to a future free from this preventable disease.
A new study from the University of Minnesota Medical School demonstrated that faecal microbiota transplantation (FMT) can rapidly reverse systemic inflammation and improve survival in patients with fulminant Clostridioides difficile (C. difficile) infection – a life-threatening condition characterised by a sepsis-like state. The findings were published in Clinical Gastroenterology and Hepatology.
C. difficile infection is the most common cause of healthcare-acquired diarrhoeal illnesses. Most of the mortality, estimated at 15 000 people annually in the United States alone, is associated with the severe and fulminant forms of the disease. C. difficile is listed as one of the most urgent infectious disease threats by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The infection occurs in people with disrupted microbial communities in the gut, most commonly by antibiotic medications.
In this study, investigators implemented a standardised FMT protocol developed at the University of Minnesota specifically for critically ill patients who were deteriorating despite intensive antibiotic therapies and were often too unstable for surgery. Among 18 patients treated, FMT was associated with rapid declines in inflammatory markers and achieved a 78% 30-day survival.
“There is an important caveat to our findings – the window for the FMT intervention is very narrow because these patients are generally extremely sick,” said Alexander Khoruts, MD, professor at the University of Minnesota Medical School, director of the UMN Microbiota Therapeutics Program and a gastroenterologist with M Health Fairview. “Therefore, the FMT formulation needs to be easily accessible. We are in a unique position at the University because we have a facility in our institution where our FMT products are manufactured in accordance with pharmaceutical standards, and treatment units are always on hand in our cryobank.”
The University of Minnesota Microbiota Therapeutics program is the leading program in the world in developing microbiome-targeted therapies with live microbial communities. As a result of the team’s work, M Health Fairview recently implemented a dedicated system that alerts providers to hospitalized patients at risk of developing severe C. difficile infection so that they can get access to the optimal treatments earlier.
Importantly, the findings also suggest an entirely novel mechanism by which FMT can modulate systemic inflammation in severe C. difficile infection. This is a topic of ongoing research. The team is also currently working to make this FMT treatment option more widely available to patients across the United States.
At this point, Avian flu H5N1 is thought to have very limited ability to transmit between humans, but a recent case in Canada with an unknown source of transmission has piqued the curiosity and concern of scientists, including York University Professor Seyed Moghadas.
Did this lone case come about through transmission from an animal or another person, and if it was via human transmission, what methods will control its spread in the human population? Director of York’s Agent-Based Modelling Laboratory in the Centre of Excellence in AI for Public Health Advancement, Moghadas and a group of researchers used modelling to understand the best spread control measures should human-to-human transmission become possible.
“The idea was, let’s evaluate some of the interventions that we usually implement at the very earliest stage of a disease outbreak or emerging disease, which we know very little about,” he says.
For the research published in Nature Health, various scenarios from isolation to vaccination before or after a spillover event were modelled. It is one of only a few studies that have explicitly modelled outbreak dynamics following spillover into humans or the effectiveness of public health interventions in early and highly uncertain phases of virus development.
As a professor of computational epidemiology and vaccine science in York’s Faculty of Science, Moghadas and his colleagues were already collecting data on H5N1 cases in the United States when the Canadian case arose. Given the unknown nature of transmission, the team decided to pivot their work to look at what was happening in British Columbia (BC).
“The case in BC was of particular interest for us because no definitive source of exposure was identified, including no direct contact with infected animals or known high-risk settings such as poultry farms,” says Moghadas. “Because of that, it came to our attention that maybe there is some sort of transmission going on between humans.”
As far as health and science experts know, H5N1 can only be transmitted among poultry and dairy cattle on farms, as well as through wild birds, and from these animals to humans, but sustained human-to-human transmission has not been established. The person from BC, however, had no clearly identified exposure and even though human infection from animals is rare, avian influenza H5N1 is considered highly pathogenic and a potentially serious and evolving threat to global public health.
“This virus was first identified in 1997 in Southeast Asia. This kind of zoonotic virus essentially jumps from the bird or animal side to human side sometimes, mostly it circulates among wild birds,” says Moghadas. “There is no confirmation that human-to-human transmission happens as yet in North America.”
The virus has only been in North America since 2022, but surveillance monitoring for it began in 2003 and up until recently there have been close to 1000 cases reported globally in humans and just under 500 deaths, although the number of cases could be higher because not all cases are likely reported or symptomatic. The virus has not only expanded its geographical range, but also the animal species it can infect.
“Evolution of influenza viruses of any type is always a challenge for humans. The flu virus is one of the very rapid mutating pathogens,” he says. The concern is it will mutate to be able to transmit between humans. How viable is it? How easily can it spillover from animals to humans, and how long could the potential chain of transmission from human-to-human become? These are still open questions.
“Quantifying that risk was important for us because that could also give us direction in terms of how bad the disease could be and what strategies will work to contain it,” says Moghadas. “We have very few measures in place or a strategy to deal with it at this point, given that the transmission between humans is not established.”
As it is an avian flu virus, it will likely require two doses of a similar vaccine to what was used during the H1N1 pandemic to reduce the risk and severity which often triggers a higher viral load.
The researchers used Abbottsford, B.C. as the location as it is a highly dense poultry farming area. The starting point is after a spillover has happened. “If a human became infected, how do we block this single individual to trigger a large outbreak? Or if the infection is going on between humans, can we block these chains and to what degree we can block them?” asks Moghadas. “What is the effectiveness of either self-isolation of symptomatic cases or vaccination of farmers or vaccination of farmers and their household members?”
Even with mitigation measures, someone in the farmer’s family could potentially be infected by the farmer and then transmit it to someone in the community.
The team evaluated two different types of vaccination strategies. One was reactive, which means that you trigger a vaccination program after a case has been identified somewhere. The second strategy was pre-emptive – individuals, such as farmers, are vaccinated before any case is identified.
What they found is that reactive vaccination has very limited additional benefits outside of self-isolation, but pre-emptive vaccination adds substantial additional benefits on top of self-isolation.
Should the virus be confirmed to be capable of human-to-human transmission, Moghadas says they want to limit the chain of transmission and minimise the risk of evolution of the virus to become more adapted to human conditions. For now, he says, when cases are identified, the person should self isolate immediately. For the authorised vaccine, it should be meted out quickly to target populations, but that could take several weeks to have population level effectiveness.
“Timely action is a critical part of controlling the spread. Self-isolation of symptomatic cases has a significant effect, but that comes with the caveat that we don’t know if everybody who is infected will develop symptoms,” says Moghadas. “There could be potential asymptomatic cases we don’t identify and by the time we do identify them, they’ve been already infecting others in the chain of transmission. This case in B.C. was particularly concerning because they could not find the source of infection.”
The concern is not only that the virus might be able to jump from animals to humans, but also the potential for it to mutate during early human transmission chains making it more adaptable to infecting humans. This underscores the risk of local outbreaks with global implications, he says.
“My research is all about evidence generation for governments, health-care providers and policymakers in public health organisations. We are generating evidence that can be used to at the very least limit the potential for this virus to become another pandemic,” says Moghadas.
