Malaria is a life-threatening disease caused by parasites and spread to humans through infected mosquitoes. It is preventable and curable, yet resistance to current antimalarial drugs is causing an avoidable loss of life.

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), there were an estimated 241 million cases of malaria worldwide in 2020, with over 600,000 deaths.

To tackle this issue, an international research team used data from the WorldWide Antimalarial Resistance Network (WWARN), a global, scientifically independent collaboration, to map the prevalence of genetic markers that show resistance to Plasmodium falciparum – the parasite that causes malaria.

Lead author associate professor Jennifer Flegg from the University of Melbourne said malaria has devastating impacts on lower-income countries and effective treatment is key to elimination.

“The antimalarial drug sulfadoxine-pyrimethamine (SP) is used in various preventative malaria treatment programmes...