Picturing health: making malaria visible in Asia-Pacific

Abstract

I tell stories with images. The story captured in these photographs is the human face of malaria in remote communities in the Asia-Pacific region where isolated and impoverished people bear the burden of malaria. These pictures were taken as part of my collaboration with the Wellcome Trust, Oxford University's Eijkman-Oxford Clinical Research Unit in Jakarta, and the Oxford University Clinical Research Unit in Ho Chi Minh City for the See Malaria in Asia Project. The images shown here are a selection from the photographs I have taken for this project that will be shown at exhibitions in Asia later this year. Telling the human story of Asia's invisible malaria burdenMalaria in Asia is a pervasive and diverse problem with about 2 billion people at risk.1 Although Plasmodium falciparum and Plasmodium vivax account for most clinical attacks of malaria in Asia, all four human plasmodia occur, as do zoonoses involving plasmodia of southeast Asian macaques2 and several dozen species of anopheline mosquito carry malaria in a wide variety of ecological habitats.3 Despite the broad scope and complexity of malaria in Asia, it represents a fairly small fraction of research endeavour and public funding in global malaria control efforts. Full-Text PDF