After St Patrick’s Day mass in Nairobi I learned about a trial in Uganda in 2012 in which the water treatment agent, chlorine dioxide (sodium chlorite and acid activator) was found to cure malaria. And this effective solution was covered up. I found a video describing the trial and have uploaded it to Rumble ‘LEAKED Proof the Red Cross Cured 154 Malaria Cases with Chlorine Dioxide’.

The video was provided by Jim Humble who developed the chlorine dioxide treatment used that is called MMS. More information on the product is available on his website. There is a conclusion in the video from his colleague, Leo Koehof. The trial was carried out in December 2012 by Klass Proesmans of Water Reference Centre with the Red Cross at Iganga, Uganda. Patients were tested for malaria parasites using Rapid Diagnostic Tests and positives rechecked by microscope. Positive patients were given the MMS treated water (see picture). All tested negative when retested then next day or day after. Over the course of the test 154 patients were cured with no apparent side effects.

However, the cover-up began immediately. Klaas Proesmans of Water Reference Centre, the narrator of the video, and the Red Cross denied that the study occurred. Leo Koehof included a link for his YouTube video but the link is no longer active. The cover-up continues. My first upload of the video to YouTube was removed nearly instantly as ‘medical misinformation’.  ‘Content that poses a serious risk of egregious harm by spreading medical misinformation that contradicts information from health authorities isn’t allowed on YouTube.’ Now after the lies of the COVID scamdemic the social media moguls and medical establishment are not fooling us.

I have more questions. The study, while interesting was relatively uncontrolled. Would the patients who tested negative the next day have tested negative anyway without the treatment? Or if given water treated with other water treatments such as chlorine or hydrogen peroxide? I do not believe that the plasmodia are a parasite that cause illness, but a symptom of poor health. This marker of malaria discovered by Lavaran in 1880 needs to be better understood.

I investigated chlorine dioxide in my previous role as Product Development Manger at Aquatabs, a water treatment tablet manufacturer. However, while gaseous chlorine dioxide is a marvellous water treatment chemical, tablet and solution products don’t just add chlorine dioxide to water, but also the chemicals that are required to generate it – sodium chlorite and an acid and whatever stabilisers are needed for the product. I thought it less appropriate for daily use than the chlorine-based water treatment products already made by Aquatabs.

However, for curing malaria, a product already used as a water treatment seems much less likely to have side-effects than the course or artesunate injections typically prescribed in Kenya and elsewhere for patients who test positive in a malaria test RTD.

Further research such as this on water and nutrition to prevent and treat malaria are the objectives of Understanding Malaria CLG.

In MalariaWorld this week my eye was drawn to the strangely titled ‘Musings from a Vectosaur: Malaria in 2026’ by Manuel F. Lluberas. Vectosaur seems to be a word invented by Lluberas from the physics term vector meaning a quantity that has both magnitude and direction (that is often applied to insects that supposedly spread infectious disease) and from the Latinized Greek, Saurus, meaning lizard. So, are we to assume that Lluberas considers himself a lizard with direction?

Underlying, the paper is a belief that malaria is spread by mosquitos, and he states ‘Modern malaria programmes rely overwhelmingly on two tools: Long-lasting insecticidal nets and indoor residual spraying’. I expect the proponents of various vaccine and drug dispensing programmes might argue with this, but Lluberas is a bug hunter, following the traditions started by Ross and Grassi.

Even if malaria were spread by mosquitos, he states the problem with the ‘insectecutor’ approach ‘Under sustained pressure, mosquito populations are responding exactly as evolutionary biology predicts: Through increasing insecticide resistance and shifts in feeding and resting behaviour that circumvent indoor interventions’.

And he despairs that even the WHO cannot be sure of how effective programmes are. WHO explained that in a large share of the countries reporting, places carrying most of the malaria burden, it was “not actually possible to reliably assess trends” because “surveillance systems were weak and unreliable.”

He says the two strategies, ‘long-lasting insecticidal nets (LLINs) and, to a lesser extent, indoor residual spraying (IRS) have their place. Both have saved lives. But they were never meant to carry the entire burden of malaria control alone.’ However, many studies I reported including one from a few weeks ago found nets to be ineffective.

He states that ‘Field entomologists tend to view the matter differently. Mosquitoes are not policy documents. They are adaptable biological systems that respond to pressure. Apply a single intervention across vast areas year after year and the vector will respond in the only way evolution allows: adapting’.

He ends his essay with ‘Perhaps the growing recognition that we are “off-course” will provide the necessary push. Until then, some of us old vectosaurs will keep asking the inconvenient question: Are we doing the right thing? Are we doing things right?’

I wonder would he go so far as to question the linkage of malaria (and other illnesses) to mosquitos which is based on the dubious work of Ross and Grassi? I doubt it. If health authorities realised that mosquitos don’t spread malaria, there would be much less research funding for entomologists.

A study in MalariaWorld this week reported there was an increased risk of malaria infection in undernourished children compared to children with an adequate nutritional status. ‘Malaria and malnutrition in children under the Seasonal Malaria Chemoprevention (SMC) coverage in the health district of Nanoro, Burkina Faso’ by Compaore et al found that malnourished children were 1.41 times more likely to have an episode of clinical malaria than children with adequate nutritional status (ANS).

The authors state that only children of the control (no intervention) arms of two projects SMC-NUT and SMC-RST which started in July 2020 and up to July 2022 were considered for the investigation. Full details of these studies, which look at a combination of SMC (with Amodiaquine-Sulfadoxine-Pyrimethamine) and nutritional supplements will presumably be reported later.  

At enrolment and during the monthly home visits or at any attendance at health facilities, weight, height and mid-upper arm circumference were measured and these data were used to determine nutritional status on a monthly basis over the study period using the WHO Anthro survey online tool with the input parameters (Age, sex, weight, and height). Participants were classified as stunting, wasting, and underweight. Undernutrition status was defined as participants having at least one of these indicators (stunting, wasting, and underweight), while adequate nutrition participants were those without any of these signs. To ensure the stability of the nutritional status classification, only children who had at least three consecutive visits and maintained the same nutritional status across those visits were included in the analysis.

Of the 425 included in the study a majority (61%) were considered malnourished. And there were 209 incidents of malaria in the 260 malnourished subjects (80%) compared to 90 of 165 (55%) of the supposedly adequately nourished children detected using rapid diagnostic tests. Malaria is clearly more common in children who the researchers considered malnourished. However, the incidence even in those considered adequately nourished is 55%. This is very high suggesting a high degree of poverty in the study areas. This causes one to question if even the minority who are considered adequately nourished are also malnourished, but less so. They are not yet stunting, wasting, or underweight.

We examine MalariaWorld and other sources each week looking for interesting studies, especially those that look at the effect of poverty, nutrition, water quality and sanitation on the occurrence and severity of malaria. So  we were drawn to ‘Socioeconomic and household water management determinants of malaria and other vector-borne disease prevention in Urban Gujarat, India’ by Batheja et al in this week’s MalariaWorld.

However the abstract reveals that nothing useful was found in the study, a socioeconomic and health survey in the cities of Ahmedabad and Surat, India, between September and November 2023. Data were collected from 4,074 households, comprising 15,484 individuals, and associations were examined between socioeconomic indicators, water availability, storage practices, and mosquito-borne disease incidence and prevention behaviours. Logistic regressions were used to identify significant predictors.

They found that self-reported disease prevalence was low, with 77 cases of malaria, dengue, and chikungunya, equivalent to 18.90 cases per 1,000 households. Socioeconomic factors such as wealth, caste, and family size were significantly associated with disease reporting and prevention practices. Households in the richest wealth quintile were more likely to adopt prevention measures, but less likely to perceive mosquito-related risks. Water management practices, particularly storage in clean large containers, were associated with increased disease symptoms and prevention measures, highlighting the complexity of vector control. Households with impermeable storage containers reported reduced use of active prevention measures.

They concluded that socioeconomic disparities and water management practices significantly influence malaria incidence and prevention behaviours. Targeted interventions prioritizing disadvantaged households, improved water storage practices, and enhanced investments in preventive care are essential to reduce vector-borne disease vulnerability and accelerate India’s malaria elimination goals.

What a huge nothing burger! Malaria was reported for just 0.40% of study participants. This is very low compared to incidence of 61% in Bas-Uele province of DRC reported last week. Obviously, with such a low incidence it is impossible to draw any statistically significant conclusions from the data. The results reported relate more so to behaviours to prevent these supposedly mosquito transmitted ailments.

If this is the most relevant study the researchers could conduct, can we deduce that in common with much of the rest of Asia, malaria is ceasing to be a major health problem in India?

Two studies in MalariaWorld this week, in Congo and Ghana, clearly suggest that poverty is the key factor linked to the occurrence of malaria in children < 5 years. And Klu et al in the Ghana study interestingly found that children who did not sleep under ITNs had lower odds of malaria (aOR = 0.52) compared to those who did. And drinking untreated water (aOR = 0.47) was associated with lower malaria risk.

‘Prevalence and factors associated with malaria among children aged 6–59 months in the Democratic Republic of the Congo: a nationwide cross-sectional survey’ by Adam et al in Malaria Journal studied a weighted sample of 10,013 children aged 6–59 months who underwent a malaria rapid diagnostic test, drawn from the 2023/24 DRC Demographic and Health Survey. It found an overall prevalence of malaria among children aged 6–59 months in the DRC was 33%, varying significantly between provinces, from 5% in Kinshasa to 61% in Bas-Uele province. Factors associated with malaria in this age group included children of mothers with no education (APR = 1.15) and those with primary education (APR = 1.13), children from the poor wealth quintile (APR = 1.52) and the middle wealth quintile (APR = 1.42), children who never slept under an insecticide-treated net (ITN) (APR = 1.18), children from households without a television (APR = 1.73), and those living in houses with unimproved floor material (APR = 1.54) or unimproved roof material (APR = 1.27).

These factors clearly show the influence of poverty. Capital residents are wealthier, as are those with more education and those who can afford televisions and improved floor and roof materials. The authors make a big deal of the ITN results, but the 1.18 improvement is much less than 1.73 for televisions. I expect if malaria researchers could link televisions to mosquito elimination, they would be proposing TVs as a solution!

And this result is contradicted in ‘Household characteristics, water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) and malaria prevalence among children aged 6–59 months in Ghana: an analysis of the 2022 Ghana Demographic and Health Survey’ by Klu et al also published in Malaria Journal. The study analyzed data from the 2022 Ghana Demographic and Health Survey (GDHS), using a weighted sample of 3,255 households with children aged 6–59 months. Malaria testing was performed with rapid diagnostic tests (RDTs).

The prevalence of malaria among children aged 6–59 months was much lower (3.7%). Insecticide-treated net (ITN) ownership was high (78.9%), but only 51.5% of children slept under ITNs. Approximately 41.5% of children were anaemic. In multivariate analysis, children in households headed by persons aged 40–59 years had lower odds of malaria compared to those in households headed by persons aged 70+. Children from wealthier households had significantly lower odds of malaria (aOR = 0.15). Unexpectedly, children who did not sleep under ITNs had lower odds of malaria (aOR = 0.52) compared to those who did. Anaemic children had more than twice the odds of malaria (aOR = 2.03) showing important of nutrition. Drinking untreated water (aOR = 0.47) and improved sanitation (aOR = 0.59) were associated with lower malaria risk, whereas having toilets located outside (aOR = 16.64) the dwelling was associated with higher odds of malaria.

Sanitation, nutrition and wealth are clearly important and the authors emphasise the need for targeted interventions in households with lower wealth and inadequate sanitation. They also, curiously, promote ITN distributions despite their finding.

(picture from ubongo.org)

This week our attention was drawn to a tweet by Kenyan lawyer and politician Paul Muite (@Paul_Muite) accusing the Gates Foundation of releasing genetically modified mosquitos in Nairobi. The claim was debunked by Gates foundation supposedly stating “We do not release mosquitoes, operate laboratories that do so, or run vector-control activities in Nairobi or anywhere else.” However, the referenced press release is not available on their website.

Despite this the controversy rumbles on. On February 12 an article in The Standard reports that advocates want to know the truth about GMO mosquitos in Nairobi. They want to see all documents related to Muite’s claim. This indicates that many Kenyans are uncomfortable with novel research malaria carried out by international organisations.

However, the Kenya government, along with many other African governments are supportive of new technology efforts. Another article today ‘Prof Faith Osier: The Kenyan scientist bringing vaccine manufacturing closer home’  promotes the malaria vaccines whose underwhelming nature we frequently discuss. They plan to start manufacturing in Kenya, although the article does not specify which vaccine. Dr Osier discusses mRNA vaccines whose use is very controversial as a result of the side-effects of the COVID ‘vaccines’.

Kenyan publication Daily Nation reported on August 20, 2025 about Gates’ plans to release genetically modified mosquitos in Tanzania in 2029, ‘Gene drive mosquitoes’ set for 2029 release to fight malaria in East Africa. This was addressed in this column in December 2025,  Innovative Bug Hunting in Tanzania. We have addressed gene drive mosquitos, especially in Burkina Faso here on August16, 2025, August 29, 2025 and August 18, 2024.

Daily Nation reported On February 11 about the suspected increase in mosquito numbers in Nairobi  ‘The buzzing crisis: Why mosquito numbers are rising’. Dr Eric Ochomo, an entomologist at KEMRI (Kenya Medical Research Institute) says they have noticed an increase in mosquito numbers but they are Aedes and Culex species, not Anopheles, the supposed malaria vector. He blamed the increase on increasing temperatures.

The gene drive mosquito controversy suggests that Africans are becoming more suspicious of technological solutions western organisations are introducing to the continent.

MalariaWorld this week reports a study ‘Determinants of malaria infection across different districts of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan: a cross-sectional study’ by Haq et al.  The study highlights the multifactorial nature of malaria transmission in KP, Pakistan, with strong associations found between malaria infection and various determinants. Key risk factors identified include younger age, male gender, low educational attainment, low household income, large family size, distance from health facilities, poor housing construction, and lack of modern sanitation.

The study did find that preventive measures such as bed net use showed significance in bivariate analysis, but their independent effect was not retained in the final model. This is because it is often confounded with other factors related to poverty. The authors recommend comprehensive interventions beyond individual behaviour change. Policymakers and public health authorities should use these findings to inform district-level malaria control strategies, focusing on education, improved housing, access to healthcare, and sanitation.

Missing is any reference to nutrition despite the fact that the main author is in Department of Clinical Nutrition at the College of Applied Medical Sciences, King Faisal University, Al Ahsa, Saudi Arabia. And throughout there are several references to how the factors might be related to more or fewer mosquito bite opportunities.

However, the clear message of this study is that factors related to poverty – income, housing quality, quality of sanitation, and level of education are linked to greater occurrence of malaria.

This weekly column will also be promulgated on Facebook from now on in addition to usmalaria website, X and LinkedIn. Understanding Malaria has been established as a non-profit organization to raise money to fund research on malaria with emphasis on how the occurrence and severity of malaria can be reduced by improvements in nutrition and drinking water quality. Its main goal is to expand knowledge to reduce the burden of the disease particularly in Africa. I invite you all to assist.

In my LinkedIn feed this week there was a posting by Nigerian pharmacy assistant Precious Ugwa about undiagnosed customers requesting malaria treatments. This reminded me of the impression I got in Kenya that when people are ill, the first illness they suspect is malaria. One time when I was unwell my friend was encouraging me to go to a hospital. I refused to go immediately, but did agree to go in a day or two if my health did not improve. I fasted and drank plenty of water and quickly recovered.

If I had gone to the hospital, no matter what the symptoms were, I know the first thing I would be tested for is malaria. Possibly by a microscopic examination of my blood, but more likely using a RDT (rapid diagnostic test). And the result would a lottery, not unlike the COVID19 testing that was so common in 2020. I did not think that a course of artesunate injections and a follow up course of tablets, probably another artemisinin combination therapy was going to do anything good for me.

It struck me that in countries with malaria, many people think of malaria in the same way as ‘the flu’, ‘a bug’, ‘a virus’, (or COVID19 in 2020-2022), are thought of in western countries. And many people suffering from such a self-diagnosed malady will go to a pharmacy to buy various treatments. In many cases they will try their best to get anti-biotics, convinced that these potent pills are needed for their condition even though doctors will always say they don’t work on viruses.

Of course, it is doubtful that any of these treatments will cure their illness, but the power of the placebo effect and suppression of symptoms may convince them that it has.

Illness is nearly always caused by lifestyle factors. Malnutrition, both lack of food and too much of the wrong foods and drinks, lack of sleep, lack of sunshine and fresh air, stress from workplace and personal problems. People get generic symptoms – fever, headaches, other pains and aches, vomiting, diarrhoea, tiredness, etc, and are convinced that they caught a bug or malaria. Perhaps a test will confirm this diagnosis.

But the best cure is to get rid of whatever lifestyle factor caused the issue in the first place. Fasting and water are good for too much of the wrong food. Rest and relaxation will help in most cases. Unfortunately, most serious malaria cases are malnourished and may not have access to safe water. Their serious illness is a result of their poverty so a quick cure is less likely.

In MalariaWorld this week there is a link to CBC Youtube Video entitled ‘Malaria vaccine rollout undercut by losses to global health funding’. The highlight of the video is a recent study that found that children who received three doses of Mosquirix™ (RTS,S/AS01) manufactured by GSK (Glaxo Smith Kline) were less likely to suffer from severe malaria.

The study ‘Effectiveness of the RTS,S/AS01(E) malaria vaccine in a real-world setting over 1 year of follow-up after the three-dose primary schedule: an interim analysis of a phase 4 study in Ghana, Kenya, and Malawi’ by Ndeketa et al was featured on MalariaWorld. It was published in Lancet in November 2025 and is also available to download there.

The headline results of this GSK sponsored study are that comparing vaccinated children from exposed clusters with unvaccinated children from unexposed clusters, country-adjusted incidence rate ratios were 0·70 (95% CI 0·67–0·73; p<0·001) for any malaria, 0·42 (0·30–0·60; p<0·001) for severe malaria, 0·64 (0·56–0·72; p<0·001) for malaria-related hospitalisations, 0·79 (0·74–0·84; p<0·001) for all-cause hospitalisations, and 0·83 (0·64–1·09; p=0·18) for all-cause mortality. The adjusted odds ratio for the prevalence of anaemia among children who were hospitalised (vaccinated children from exposed clusters vs unvaccinated children from unexposed clusters) was 0·81 (95% CI 0·73–0·90; p<0·001).

I always understood that a vaccine was supposed to make if very unlikely one would get the target disease. This reported result states that a vaccine recipient is still 70% as likely to get the disease as one who doesn’t. Is this reduction worthwhile? Note that the all-cause mortality improvement is not statistically significant. This means that the study did not statistically prove that vaccine recipients were less likely to die.

But this is a study paid for by the manufacturer. And of course, their paid scribes ignore the statistical uncertainty and interpret thus ‘These findings reinforce the continued use of RTS,S/AS01E vaccination in children as an effective public health measure to reduce malaria-related illness and mortality in endemic regions’.

However, now after all the COVID vaccine controversies many of us are aware that vaccine studies are often manipulated to benefit the sponsor, and I suspect this study is no different. The usual approach is to selectively exclude inconvenient subjects from the study. In this 20% of the 22,564 subjects in the six vaccinated clusters were excluded from the follow up and 5% of the unvaccinated. Many of of the exclusions were because the subject had not received three doses. Perhaps many of these suffered adverse reactions after the first or second dose. These would have been many of the weaker children of this cohort and their exclusion could significantly skew the results.

A recent story in Techpoint Africa is a good example of how the scourge of malaria is used to justify new technologies. ‘Sora raises $2.5 million additional seed to eradicate malaria in Africa with AI-powered drones’ by Bolu Abiodun discusses the fundraising by Japanese start-up Sora Technology, that uses drones (see picture) and artificial intelligence to fight infectious diseases, mainly malaria.

Through its flagship initiative, SORA Malaria Control, the company combines satellite data, drones, and AI models to predict outbreaks, analyse environments, and deploy targeted vector control interventions. The company uses AI to find and map mosquito breeding sites while also ranking which ones pose the highest risk. It is active in many African nations including Ghana, Sierra Leone, Benin, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Senegal, Kenya, and Mozambique. The fresh capital will be used to advance Sora’s AI-powered disease prediction tools, team expansion, and strengthen partnerships with governments and international health institutions. Sora has partnered with the World Health Organisation to support sustainable malaria control efforts in Mozambique.

And this week in MalariaWorld there are descriptions of many other projects linking funding to malaria and novel research and technologies. There is research linking malaria vaccines to Parkinson’s disease progression, $7M Gates support of more vaccine development, in-silico studies of Plasmodia invading erythrocytes, Automated microscopy for malaria diagnosis in a reference laboratory in nonendemic settings, Housing modifications for heat adaptation, thermal comfort and malaria vector control in rural African settlements, as well as he usual drug testing and other research studies.

There is one study looking at nutrition. ‘Essential Trace Elements and Their Impact on Immune Response and Disease Severity in Malaria Infection: A Systematic Review’ by Hanifian et al found that across human and experimental studies, malaria infection was consistently associated with reduced serum concentrations of iron, zinc, and magnesium. The full study is behind a paywall but in the abstract it is stated that zinc supplementation improved micronutrient status but showed limited impact on malaria incidence. They also found that plasma levels of sodium, magnesium, calcium, and zinc were significantly reduced in malaria patients.

Malaria is a disease of poverty and it is clear that malnutrition plays an important role in its occurrence and severity. This, rather than novel technologies, is the area where research will have the greatest impact at actually reducing the burden of the illness.