title: Impact of Malaria in Pregnancy as Latin America Approaches Elimination.
abstract: In Latin America, four million pregnancies are at risk of malaria annually, but malaria in pregnancy is largely overlooked. As countries progress toward malaria elimination, targeting reservoirs of transmission is a priority. Pregnant women are an important risk group because they harbor asymptomatic infections and dormant liver stages of Plasmodium vivax that cause relapses. Of significant concern is the discovery that most infections in pregnant women fail to be detected by routine diagnostics. We review here recent findings on malaria in pregnancy within Latin America. We focus on the Amazon basin and Northwest Colombia, areas that harbor the greatest burden of malaria, and propose that more sensitive diagnostics and active surveillance at antenatal clinics will be necessary to eliminate malaria from these final frontiers.
authors.affiliation: School of Public Health, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada; Department of Medical Microbiology and Immunology, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. Electronic address: yanow@ualberta.ca.
authors.forename: Stephanie K
authors.initials: SK
authors.lastname: Yanow
authors.affiliation: Department of Medical Microbiology and Immunology, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada.
authors.forename: Kenneth
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Gavina
authors.affiliation: Department of Biology, Campus Saint-Jean, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada.
authors.forename: Sedami
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Gnidehou
authors.affiliation: Grupo Salud y Comunidad, Universidad de Antioquia, Medellín, Colombia.
authors.forename: Amanda
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Maestre
mesh_terms: D060740:Disease Eradication; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007843:Latin America; D008288:Malaria / Q000517:prevention & control*; D011247:Pregnancy; D015597:Pregnancy Complications, Parasitic / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000517:prevention & control*
keywords: Latin America; P. falciparum; P. vivax; malaria; pregnancy