Malaria is a disease spread by mosquitos. According to the World Health Organisation, there were about 219 million reported cases of malaria around the world in 2017. In the same year, 435,000 people died from this horrible disease. Sixty-one per cent of them were children under the age of five years old.
If someone is found to be carrying malaria, they can be treated and will not die from it. The problem is that thousands of people carry the disease in their blood without knowing they have it. They have no symptoms. If they are bitten by a mosquito, their infected blood can be passed to others and they may become sick.
So how do you find people that are carrying the disease without knowing it? Help may be at hand from man’s best friend: dogs.
One hundred and seventy-five healthy children in the Gambia in Africa were each given one pair of new socks. They were asked to wear them overnight. The next morning, the socks were collected and frozen, then flown to England for testing. The children had their blood tested for malaria. Thirty of them were found to be carrying malaria – and they did not know until then.
Waiting for the socks in England were two dogs called Sally and Lexi. They belong to a charity called Medical Detection Dogs. They had been trained over the previous six months to identify the smell of malaria. When they could smell the disease, they would either sit down or freeze – and would be given a dog biscuit as a reward. They would also be rewarded if they did not smell the disease. Sally and Lexi were able to identify 70 per cent of the socks worn by the Gambian children who had malaria and 90 per cent of the children who did not have the disease.
The research has been funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and continues today. It may not be too long before you see dogs like Sally and Lexi at airports. Their job will be to smell people as they arrive from different countries. If they can identify carriers of malaria, the people can be treated. It’s much cheaper and more convenient than giving everyone a blood test. This amazing programme could go a long way towards helping to eliminate malaria forever.
Question:
VIDEO: Dogs sense malaria in new trial:
VOCABULARY
