Section: Overall Objectives

Highlights of the Year

The estimation of sequestered parasite population has been a challenge for the biologist and modeler, with many authors having studied this problem. The difficulty is that the infected erythrocyte leaves the circulating peripheral blood and binds to the endothelium in the microvasculature of various organs. A measurement of Plasmodium falciparum parasitaemia taken from a blood smear therefore samples young parasites only and there is no clinical methods to measure the sequestered parasites. We have developed a simple tool to estimate the sequestered parasites and hence the total parasite burden for Plasmodium falciparum malaria patients. We have also given a method to estimate a crucial parameter in the model of infection. This parameter $\beta$ can be thought as the “transmission/invading" factor between merozoites and erythrocytes. This work [11] will be published in "Mathematical Biosciences and Engineering".