Shabbir’s Blog

Okay, so looking at the title of this post, you’ll be thinking - that’s it - Shabbir’s finally lost the plot, but it’s true, I’ve not lost the plot and you can use Computers to fight Malaria.  Let me explain:

Malaria is a nasty illness, potentially fatal in many cases, and it is still rife in many parts of what is commonly called the "Developing World".

Here are ten facts about Malaria - as given by the WHO (World Health Organization), which shows just how nasty this disease is:

Malaria is a disease which can be transmitted to people of all ages. It is caused by parasites of the species plasmodium that are spread from person to person through the bites of infected mosquitoes. If not treated promptly with effective medicines, malaria can often be fatal.

About 40% of the world’s population, mostly those living in the poorest countries, are at risk of malaria. Of these 2.5 billion people at risk, more than 500 million people become severely ill with malaria every year and more than 1 million people die from the effects of the disease.

One in five (20%) of all childhood deaths in Africa are due to malaria. It is estimated that an African child has on average between 1.6 and 5.4 episodes of malaria fever each year. Every 30 seconds a child dies from malaria in Africa.

Early diagnosis and prompt treatment are two basic elements of malaria control. Early and effective treatment of malaria can shorten the duration of the infection and prevent further complications including the great majority of deaths. Access to disease management should be seen not only as a component of malaria control but a fundamental right of all populations at risk.

Inappropriate use of antimalarial drugs in the past century contributed to widespread resistance in the malaria parasite to drugs such as chloroquine, leading to rising rates of sickness and death. Over the past decade, a new group of antimalarials – known as artemisinin-based combination therapies – has brought new hope in the fight against malaria.

The main objective of malaria vector control is to significantly reduce the rate and number of cases of both parasite infection and clinical malaria. This is achieved by controlling the malaria-bearing mosquito and thereby reducing or interrupting transmission.

Long-lasting insecticidal nets can be used to provide protection to risk groups, especially young children and pregnant women in high transmission areas. This provides personal protection. The nets can also protect communities when coverage is high enough (more than 80% of people in a target community sleeping inside them). The nets are effective for a number of years (3 to 5 years, depending on models and conditions of use).

Indoor residual spraying is the most effective means of rapidly reducing mosquito density. Its full potential is obtained when at least 80 % of premises with malaria vectors are sprayed. Indoor spraying is effective for 3 to 6 months, depending on the insecticide used and the type of surface on which it is sprayed. (DDT is effective for longer periods, up to 12 months in some cases).

Pregnant women are at high risk not only of dying from the complications of severe malaria, but also spontaneous abortion, premature delivery or stillbirth. Malaria is also a cause of severe maternal anaemia and is responsible for about one third of preventable low birth weight babies. It contributes to the deaths of an estimated 10 000 pregnant women and up to 200 000 infants each year in Africa alone.

Malaria causes an average loss of 1.3% of annual economic growth in countries with intense transmission. It traps families and communities in a downward spiral of poverty, disproportionately affecting marginalized and poor people who cannot afford treatment or who have limited access to health care. Malaria has lifelong effects through increased poverty and impaired learning. It cuts attendance at schools and workplaces. However, it is preventable and curable.

Now that we know what Malaria is, what’s all this about Distributed computing and Africa@Home and stuff?  Well you’ve all heard of Folding@Home, the Stanford University distributed computing project for research into protein folding - you have heard of it - right?  Well Africa@Home is another bunch of techies, though this time they’re based out of the CERN Labs in Switzerland.  They have used the BOINC(Berkley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing) Project to create a distributed or grid computing environment to help with solving the problem of Malaria. 

They’ve also had a fair bit of press, but nothing like the press given to the Folding@Home guys, and so instead of jumping on the proverbial bandwagon and going with what everyone seems to be doing - I thought that I’d tell you guys about the Malaria Control project.

According to the blurb on the Malaria Control Website they describe the project as:

The malariacontrol.net project is an application that makes use of network computing for stochastic modelling of the clinical epidemiology and natural history of Plasmodium falciparum malaria.

The CERN Africa@Home site has more information, which is very useful, and indeed, I would argue, compels anyone with a heart to go and assist this project as nest as they can, with whatever resources they can muster.  Have a look at the What Is MalariaControl.net set of pages on the Africa@Home site for more information.

Bottom line is this.  The BOINC Client is very easy to use, and don’t slow your machine down as might be suspected by some readers.  It is stable, reliable, and unobtrusive.  It just goes away, and churns away at the work units it is given - using your computers CPU (or CPUs if you have either a Multi-Core or SMP system - generally one work unit per CPU Core, so a modern Dual Core CPU would be able to churn away at two work units, and wouldn’t give you a hard time, as you work away at your computer.  There is also a nice screen saver. 

The other nice thing about BOINC, is that it works on ALL flavours of Windows - all the way from Windows 98, right upto Windows Vista, which is great for putting those old machines that you have doing nothing to some good, humanitarian use; it also works fine on Linux, as well as Mac OS X and off course Solaris.  This is really nice, because you can now pick up reasonably decent SUN Netra T1 200s (UltraSPARC-IIe 500MHz) with 512MB of RAM for under £100 on eBay.

So go on over, and get your machines number crunching (naturally when you’re not busy using them, and all of that happens automatically!).

Let me know how you’re doing with the Malaria Control experiment, there are a number of other projects available, but the Malaria one is particularly close to my heart, both my better half and myself have had Malaria, and we both know people who have been killed by Malaria.  Having lived in Africa - notably Tanzania (in fact my wife runs a site that has news from Tanzania - take a look Tanzania News (Tz-News) - we both know what havoc this killer can bring about, and how many young orphans and widows it leaves in it’s wake.  It’s the least we can do to help those less fortunate than ourselves.

If there is enough demand, I’ll throw a tutorial together that’ll explain how to install and configure the BOINC client for MalariaControl.  Let me know.

Warm Regards,

Shabbir