Section: Overall Objectives

Highlights of the Year

Malaria infection is characterized by the fact that only the peripheral infected red blood cells (young parasites), also called circulating, can be observed (can be seen on peripheral blood smears) and the other ones (sequestered), hidden in some organs like brain and heart, can not be observed. There is no clinical method of measuring those sequestered infected cells. We have developed a simple tool to estimate the sequestered parasites and hence the total parasite burden for Plasmodium falciparum malaria patients [14] .