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