Malaria and vector-borne disease resources

This collection has been produced to complement the Catalyst Live! webinar held on 22nd Feb 2022 which focused on 'Vector-Borne Diseases, Mosquitoes and Genetic Control Strategies'

At the end of the webinar, a number of educational resources were demonstrated that can support the teaching of these topics to KS4 and KS5 students. The links below provide a collection of these resources and are freely available to access.

Worldmapper provides an interesting way of viewing data. A map of the Earth is shown for reference with the size of countries being altered according to a named variable. For example, with 'number of malarial deaths' as a variable, we can see that most countries and continents of the Earth disappear, leaving only a (giant) Africa, India and Indonesia, indicating the areas where this disease is endemic.

Our world in data is a very useful platform that displays historical data on various factors – in this case childhood deaths from the five most lethal infectious diseases worldwide. The website is a valuable resource that can be used to display chart trends and make teaching points, but also supplied data in the form of tables that students can then be asked to analyse for themselves.

This tool allows students to explore real data quickly and easily— both from their own projects and published research or databases (such as epidemiological data)— to help make sense of the world. They can use the tool to make plots and do statistical analyses to learn more about their own data, which is useful in developing their mathematical competencies.

HHMI Biointeractive is a website contains many resources and animations that show the progression of malaria and provides data that can be analysed. This particular video clip shows how the malarial parasite develops inside a human host cell. There are many other animations available via the search option on this website

CDC (Centre for Disease Control) provides many fact sheets, posters and infographics on malaria including strategies and treatment. The resources can be used in a variety of ways and are ideal for student research or homework tasks that require access to detailed advice and guidance.

Learn about different viruses, including both structure and size. This is a good resource to demonstrate to students the variety of different viruses that exist and also their relative sizes. The scales provided allow the images to be used for purposes of calculating magnification of an image. A detailed worksheet which guides students through various tasks using the virus explorer can be found HERE

The Centre for Disease Control's ‘Solve the Outbreak’ interactive app provides an engaging way for students to learn about disease control and prevention. The resource provides various scenarios of disease outbreaks and requires students to make appropriate decisions to manage an unfolding crisis. The app provides students with a good understanding of the role of epidemiologists and other scientists in saving lives around the world.

Investigations on this topic are not the easiest to come by, but biointeractive has produced an inspirational protocol for an investigation into the mosquito life cycle. A mosquito breeding chamber can either be assembled using easily sourced materials or purchased from a specialist lab equipment supplier and used to investigate the effectiveness of key variables on curtailing mosquito breeding patterns.

From the Microbiology Society. Aspects of virology feature in many post 16 specifications but practical virology is virtually absent in school because of difficulties in handling the micro-organisms (both perceived and real). Bacteriophages (viruses that only infect bacteria) are relatively easy to handle and can be used to illustrate many concepts of virology, such as counting infectious virus particles. This resource provides a practical protocol using bacteriophages that can be used in the school laboratory.

From Science and Plants for Schools (SAPS) – an investigation which involves infecting healthy fruit with brown rot. This can be used to demonstrate Koch’s postulates (four criteria designed to establish a causative relationship between a microbe and a disease).