Severe malaria is a medical emergency requiring immediate treatment. However, malaria is not always the only cause of severe illness. The symptoms of malaria can be very similar to those of bacterial infections in the bloodstream, making it difficult for health workers to know what is causing a child’s illness.
This is particularly challenging in areas where malaria is common. "When a child arrives at a hospital with critical clinical presentation, making the right call quickly can be the difference between life and death. But here is the problem: around a third of children treated for severe malaria are actually misdiagnosed, and the real cause is a bacterial bloodstream infection. A positive malaria test does not rule that out, because malaria is so common that a child can have parasites in their blood and still be dying of something else. FACT is designed to close that gap," says Rella Manego Zoleko, Clinical Research Leader and Clinician Investigator at “Centre de Recherches Medicales de Lambaréné”.
The World Health Organization (WHO) recommends that children with suspected severe malaria receive both injectable artesunate, the standard treatment for severe malaria, and antibiotics to treat possible bacterial infections. In practice, however, children do not always receive both treatments. At the same time, malaria parasites are becoming less sensitive to some of the medicines used to treat malaria, while antibiotic resistance is also increasing in many African countries. Therefore there is an urgent need for new treatment approaches that can address both malaria and bacterial infections while helping to preserve the effectiveness of existing medicines. This is where FACT is stepping in.
The FACT project is developing and testing a new treatment approach with a novel antibiotic-based combination therapy that combines two licensed drugs and one in late-stage development.
“Our Department of Clinical Pharmacology will play an important role in building sustainable capacity for pharmacokinetic trial conduct in Central Africa. We will support the training and development of young scientists while strengthening human resources, infrastructure, and institutional systems. Our goal is not only to build expertise, but to establish lasting structures and capabilities that enable high-quality clinical research to be conducted locally and sustainably.”, says Markus Zeitlinger head of department.
FACT aims to provide doctors with a single, safer and more effective treatment approach that can address two potentially life-threatening causes of illness in children.
Coordinator
- Bernhard-Nocht-Institut für Tropenmedizin (BNITM), Germany
Scientific leadership
- Centre de Recherches Medicales de Lambaréné (CERMEL), Gabon
Partner institutions
- Eberhard Karls Universitaet Tübingen (UT), Germany
- Universitatsklinikum Heidelberg (UKHD), Germany
- Fondation Congolaise pour la Recherche Medicale (FCRM), Republic of the Congo
- Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Kumasi Centre for Collaborative Research in Tropical Medicine (KNUST/KCCR), Ghana
- University of Hamburg (UHAM), Germany
- Medizinische Universitaet Wien (MUW), Austria
- Addis Ababa University (AAU), Ethiopia
- Eurice European Research and Project Office GMBH, Germany
- DMG Deutsche Malaria GmbH, Germany
Funder
The FACT project is supported by Global Health EDCTP3 and its members. This work is part of the Global Health EDCTP3 Joint Undertaking under grant number 101248797-FACT and is co-funded by the European Union.
Disclaimer
Funded by the European Union under Global Health EDCTP3. Views and opinions expressed are, however, those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of Global Health EDCTP3 nor its members. Neither of the parties can be held responsible for them.