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Study raising malaria death toll 'radically changes the picture'

In this 2003 file photo, patients wait to hear the results of their tests for Malaria, at a hospital in Guayaquil, Ecuador. Malaria may be killing about twice as many people as experts previously thought, new research suggests.
The Associated Press
In this 2003 file photo, patients wait to hear the results of their tests for Malaria, at a hospital in Guayaquil, Ecuador. Malaria may be killing about twice as many people as experts previously thought, new research suggests.

A new global estimate of malaria deaths by researchers in Seattle has revealed the death toll is much greater than most experts had thought — and is not, as had been universally assumed, mostly a killer of children.

The study found more than 1.2 million people died from malaria in 2010, nearly twice the official estimate put out by the World Health Organization, and more than a third of the deaths were in adults.

Read more on Humanosphere.

The host of the Humanosphere community is Tom Paulson, who spent 22 years reporting on science and medicine at the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. Tom was one of the first daily news reporters to cover the topic of “global health” (a much-debated label which he discusses the merits of on the Humanosphere website).