Controlling Malaria Sub Saharan Africa

The WHO Global Malaria Programme is responsible for evidence-based policy and strategy formulation, technical assistance, capacity building, malaria surveillance, monitoring and evaluation, and coordination of global efforts to fight malaria. WHO is also a co-founder and hosts the Roll Back Malaria partnership, which is the global framework to implement coordinated action against malaria (The World Health Organization Staff, 2010). The CDC participates actively in global malaria efforts through work with the WHO, Roll Back Malaria Partners, UNICEF, and more in the fight to keep the epidemic at bay (Global Health - Division of Parasitic Diseases , 2010).

In Kenya, an African country that is affected by Plasmodium falciparum, the most aggressive of the four species of malaria, the negative economic impact of malaria can be clearly seen. Malaria-related GDP losses reached 2-6% of the total economic output of the country, with 58% of those losses being in the agricultural sector and 7% in the industrial sector (Chima, 2003). When workers or their children contract malaria, they are unable to go to work, work effectively, or spend money on things other than treatment (Chima, 2003). In other words, malaria acts as a drain on both the productivity of a country, as often there is no other person available to take the place of the absent worker. Furthermore, the costs of finding alternates to replace workers who have fallen ill, or must take care of their children is placed squarely on the shoulders of businesses, while the individual who contracted malaria, or must care for someone who has malaria is unable to both earn money for their absent days, as well as spend money in areas other than the treatment of malaria, thus stimulation only a small portion of the economy, and effectively blocking the circulation of funds in the economy to their fullest extent (Chima, 2003).

Malaria has been a huge problem among many developing nations over the past century. The amount of people in the entire world that die from malaria each year is between 700,000 and 2.7 million. 75% of these deaths are African children (Med. Letter on CDC & FDA, 2001). 90% of the malaria cases in the world are located in Sub-Saharan Africa. Once again, the majority of these deaths are of children (Randerson, 2002). The numbers speak for themselves. Malaria is a huge problem and needs to be dealt with immediately.

Fortunately this may all change as for the first time there is talk of wiping out malaria, mostly if not entirely from human existence. To first understand how this is possible, we must first discuss why is malaria, such a big problem and why is it so efficient in what it does. Malaria is commonly found parasites, including Plasmodium falciparum, P. vivax, P. ovale, and P. these parasites commonly infects mosquitoes which feed off of the blood of various animals including humans. Interestingly, only female mosquitos are able to host the parasites needed to spread malaria. When the mosquito puncture people with their hypodermic like nose to drink the blood, typically a bit of the blood is regurgitated and when this is done, some of the mosquito spit is also put back into the person. In the spit exists the parasites which are responsible for the symptoms of malaria. Once the parasites are in the body, they will begin to make their way to the liver and eventually infect a large amount of liver cells until the parasites are mature. Once some of the parasites are mature, some will enter the bloodstream while others will remain dormant within the liver to ensure that not all of the parasites are

It has been estimated that 609 million people in Africa are at risk of having malaria (Mabaso et al 2007, p. 35). Almost 34% of the populations in Zambia live in endemic risk areas, while 48% of the populations are in epidemic risk (Guerra et al., 2008, p.54; WHO

In the seventeenth century a group of Jesuits brought back tree back that had quinine in it from Peru. This proved to cure malaria and was a major step in malaria treatment. The complexity of the malaria parasite is astounding, as it has six separate cycles in which half occur in the mosquito and half occur in the human body. Due to this extremely complex life cycle, there is no easy way out to target one point, and to fully eradicate malaria the entire global population would have to be on anti-malarial pills for the entire life cycle of a mosquito.

Despite the significant gains made in reducing malaria in Ghana, this disease remains a major public heath

Between 1998-2004, the malaria cases in Panama quadrupled. And globally, the malaria death toll has grown inescapably since 1981. In 1995, Europe suffered 90,000 cases of malaria. Today, eight times more malaria patients arrive at the clinics and hospitals across Europe than they did in the 1970’s. Mosquitoes infect between 250 million and 500 million people with malaria every year and close to 1 million perish. Human beings have suffered the disease for more than 500,000 years. This plague is very deadly.

von Seidlein L et al. discusses the changes in malaria incidence recorded at a single site in Africa over 25 years, along with future implications for disease prevention.

In Madagascar, Malaria has been a major concern due to its steady impact on child mortality. This public health disease has rendered low economic country being trapped in poverty. When the resident lack access to basic healthcare, treatment are often delayed that leads to a severe consequence. Without aggressive involvement in tackling the problem, malaria continues to plague Madagascar for the last 30 years. In a cross-sectional study conducted by Meeker and Yukich (2016) explored the association of household having a bed net and child mortality rate in Madagascar. Every year, it costs the Madagascar government about $52 million dollars on prevention efforts. The most preferred strategy in Malaria prevention was distributing the long-lasting insecticide-treated bed nets, also known as LLIN. The distribution of LLIN did decreased child mortality rate by 22% in the last 10 years.

P. falciparum is the most prevalent malaria parasite on the African continent. It is responsible for most malaria-related deaths globally.P. vivax has a wider distribution than P. falciparum, and predominates in many countries outside of Africa.

Departing from MDA chemotherapy, other forms of vector control is the use of long-lasting insecticidal nets (LLINs) and indoor residual spraying (IRS) with insecticides. MDA and use of LLINs and IRS techniques are all problematic for similar reasons. First and foremost, use of insecticides has been closely tied to the development of resistance on the part of the vector. Several studies have demonstrated increased resistance of Anopheles species to insecticides previously used for control measures in the region, including organophosphates, carbamates, and pyrethroids (Benelli, Jeffries, & Walker, 2016). For example, the exposure time required to kill 50% of the An. gambiae population in an area in

This can lead to new generations of mosquito that are resistant to the pesticides and therefore much more difficult to wipe out. This is a significant obstacle to eradication efforts in places that are larger and less easily organized to fight malaria than Trinidad was. As a result, the measures that eliminated malaria in Trinidad must be applied in conjunction with an evolutionary understanding of mosquito resistance if they are to be effective elsewhere today.

According to the U.S. Center for Disease Control, “every year more than 1.5 million people around the globe lose their lives due to mosquito-borne diseases” (2012). A mosquito is an insect which lives around the world especially in tropical and subtropical countries. The mosquito has both positive and negative effects. As part of positive effects, larvae of mosquitoes are food for fish and dragonflies, and when mosquitoes consume nectar, they help the flowers to pollinate. On the other hand, mosquitoes make people annoyed and cause many diseases. World Health Organization (2016) explains that the mosquito is the greatest menace which causes many diseases and they are responsible for more than million deaths and cases every year. There are many diseases that caused by mosquitoes, but the diseases are commonly found and get people’s attention because they have many negative effects on people such as malaria, dengue fever, and zika virus disease.

About 3.3 billion people, that is about half of the world’s population are at risk of contracting malaria (figure 1). Every year there are 250 million cases of malaria, and nearly 1 million deaths. That amounts to 2,732 deaths per day. Out of those million people that die every year, 800,000 of them are African children under the age of 5. To control malaria three actions need to be taken: insecticides need to be used to decrease the vector population, people have to be educated as to how to prevent the vector from reproducing, and anti-malarial drugs need to be distributed. To understand the vector and what the vector is, scientists had to first discover what the parasite was and how it worked. It was not until the year 1880 that French Physician Charles Laveran discovered that Malaria was caused by a protozoan in the genus Plasmodium (Malaria, 2013)