Placental malaria: a preventable malady

Pregnant women are more prone to becoming infected with malaria than other adults. In their case, the parasite tends to hide in the placenta, unnoticed but damaging to the host and her unborn child. An EU-funded project has set out to improve the antenatal care as well as the malaria diagnosis and treatment available to expectant mothers in endemic areas.The Cosmic project aims to advance the fight against pregnancy-associated malaria (PAM). Clinics in endemic areas do offer the recommended antenatal care, says project coordinator Henk Schallig of the Royal Tropical Institute in the Netherlands, but expectant mothers don’t necessarily seek it out — for example, because they live too far away.