title: Operational research needs toward malaria elimination in China.
abstract: Owing to the implementation of a national malaria elimination programme from 2010 to 2020, we performed a systematic review to assess research challenges in the People's Republic of China (P.R. China) and define research priorities in the next few years. A systematic search was conducted for articles published from January 2000 to December 2012 in international journals from PubMed and Chinese journals from the China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI). In total, 2532 articles from CNKI and 308 articles from PubMed published between 2010 and 2012 related to malaria after unrelated references and review or comment were further excluded, and a set of research gaps have been identified that could hinder progress toward malaria elimination in P.R. China. For example, there is a lack of sensitive and specific tests for the diagnosis of malaria cases with low parasitemia, and there is a need for surveillance tools that can evaluate the epidemic status for guiding the elimination strategy. Hence, we argue that malaria elimination will be accelerated in P.R. China through the development of new tests, such as detection of parasite or drug resistance, monitoring glucose-6-phosphate dehydrogenase (G6PD) deficiency, active malaria screening methods, and understanding the effects of the environment and climate variation on vector distribution.
authors.affiliation: National Institute of Parasitic Diseases, Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention; Key Laboratory of Parasite and Vector Biology of the Chinese Ministry of Health; WHO Collaborating Centre for Malaria, Schistosomiasis and Filariasis, Shanghai, People's Republic of China.
authors.forename: Shen-Bo
authors.initials: SB
authors.lastname: Chen
authors.affiliation: National Institute of Parasitic Diseases, Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention; Key Laboratory of Parasite and Vector Biology of the Chinese Ministry of Health; WHO Collaborating Centre for Malaria, Schistosomiasis and Filariasis, Shanghai, People's Republic of China.
authors.forename: Chuan
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Ju
authors.affiliation: National Institute of Parasitic Diseases, Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention; Key Laboratory of Parasite and Vector Biology of the Chinese Ministry of Health; WHO Collaborating Centre for Malaria, Schistosomiasis and Filariasis, Shanghai, People's Republic of China.
authors.forename: Jun-Hu
authors.initials: JH
authors.lastname: Chen
authors.affiliation: National Institute of Parasitic Diseases, Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention; Key Laboratory of Parasite and Vector Biology of the Chinese Ministry of Health; WHO Collaborating Centre for Malaria, Schistosomiasis and Filariasis, Shanghai, People's Republic of China.
authors.forename: Bin
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Zheng
authors.affiliation: National Institute of Parasitic Diseases, Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention; Key Laboratory of Parasite and Vector Biology of the Chinese Ministry of Health; WHO Collaborating Centre for Malaria, Schistosomiasis and Filariasis, Shanghai, People's Republic of China.
authors.forename: Fang
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Huang
authors.affiliation: National Institute of Parasitic Diseases, Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention; Key Laboratory of Parasite and Vector Biology of the Chinese Ministry of Health; WHO Collaborating Centre for Malaria, Schistosomiasis and Filariasis, Shanghai, People's Republic of China.
authors.forename: Ning
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Xiao
authors.affiliation: National Institute of Parasitic Diseases, Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention; Key Laboratory of Parasite and Vector Biology of the Chinese Ministry of Health; WHO Collaborating Centre for Malaria, Schistosomiasis and Filariasis, Shanghai, People's Republic of China.
authors.forename: Xia
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Zhou
authors.affiliation: Center for Sustainable Malaria Control, Faculty of Natural and Environmental Science; Center for Sustainable Malaria Control, Biochemistry Department, Faculty of Natural and Agricultural Sciences, University of Pretoria, Pretoria, South Africa.
authors.forename: Tambo
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Ernest
authors.affiliation: National Institute of Parasitic Diseases, Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention; Key Laboratory of Parasite and Vector Biology of the Chinese Ministry of Health; WHO Collaborating Centre for Malaria, Schistosomiasis and Filariasis, Shanghai, People's Republic of China.
authors.forename: Xiao-Nong
authors.initials: XN
authors.lastname: Zhou
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D002681:China; D060740:Disease Eradication; D004199:Disease Vectors; D015340:Epidemiologic Research Design; D006801:Humans; D007306:Insecticides; D008288:Malaria / Q000517:prevention & control*; D010961:Plasmodium / Q000502:physiology; D014611:Vaccination
chemical_list: D007306:Insecticides
keywords: Diagnosis; Drug resistance; Elimination strategy; Malaria elimination; Operational research; Surveillance tools; Vector biology