Medicine
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This repository contains the published and unpublished research of the Faculty of Medicine by the staff members of the faculty
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Item The impact of repeated malaria attacks on the school performance of children(American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene, 2003) Fernando, S.D.; Gunawardena, D.M.; Bandara, M.R.; de Silva, D.; Carter, R.; Mendis, K.N.; Wickremasinghe, A.R.The impact of repeated malarial infections on the school performance of children was investigated in 571 school children 6-14 years of age in a malaria-endemic area in southern Sri Lanka where both Plasmodium falciparum and P. vivax infections are prevalent. Malaria infections confirmed by microscopy were monitored over a six-year period. School performance was assessed by two specially designed, school grade-specific, test papers for Sinhala language and mathematics. The scores for Sinhala language and mathematics for each school term test for the year 1997 were obtained. Malarial infections were a major predictor of children's performance in language and mathematics after controlling for parent's education, monthly family income, and house type. The education of the father predicted language scores but not mathematics scores. A child who experienced more than five attacks of malaria scored approximately 15 percent less than a child who experienced less than three attacks of malaria. The data suggest that repeated attacks of malaria have an adverse impact on the school performance of children.Item Use of routinely collected past surveillance data in identifying and mapping high-risk areas in a malaria endemic area of Sri Lanka(SEAMEO Regional Tropical Medicine and Public Health Project, 2002) Wickremasinghe, A.R.; Gunawardena, D.M.; Mahawithanage, S.T.C.Stratification of malaria endemic areas on eco-epidemiological criteria is an important step in planning and implementing malaria control programs. The uses of stratification of malaria endemic areas lead to better targeting of control measures such as residual insecticide spraying in countries where unstable malaria transmission occur. In this study, two methods that can be used for stratification of malaria endemic areas in Sri Lanka usingroutinely collected surveillance data over a period of 9 years are described. In the first method, the median Annual Parasite Incidence (API) was used as the criterion to classify an area as at risk for malaria while in the second method, the API and the Falciparum Rate (FR) were used as the criteria. Risk maps were produced by plotting the results of the analyses on maps generated by EPIMAP. The potential uses of risk maps are discussed