Detection Of Plasmodium Parasites From Images Of Thin Blood Smears Using Artificial Neural Networks Essay

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).

Malaria has been a major life-threatening disease for thousands of years, and continues to threaten millions of lives around the world. It infects approximately 219 million people each year, mostly poor women and children. What is striking about malaria is the fact that it has the worse effect on those with the least ability to fight the disease. The Republic of Cuba believes that malaria prevention, treatment, and research efforts must be accelerated to eliminate the burden of this disease across Africa, Asia, the Americas, and any country or territory at risk of malaria transmissions.

Brian, G, Y., Greenwood, D, A., Fidock, Dennis, E, K., Stefan, H, I. Kappe, P., Alonso, L., Frank, H and Collins, P (2008) “Malaria progress and prospects for eradication.” Journal Clinical Investiment. 118: 1266-1276.

Malaria (also called biduoterian fever, blackwater fever, falciparum malaria, plasmodium, Quartan malaria, and tertian malaria) is one of the most infectious and most common diseases in the world. This serious, sometimes-fatal disease is caused by a parasite that is carried by a certain species of mosquito called the Anopheles. It claims more lives every year than any other transmissible disease except tuberculosis. Every year, five hundred million adults and children (around nine percent of the world’s population) contract the disease and of these, one hundred million people die. Children are more susceptible to the disease than adults, and in Africa, where ninety percent of the world’s cases occur and where eighty percent of the cases

Background - Malaria is a water borne disease. It is spread by a parasite-carrying mosquito. It kills many people and reduces a country 's capacity to develop. There are different strategies to combat malaria. Around half the population is at risk of malaria and this disease is active in 106 counties across Africa, Asian and the Americas (see source 3). the global annual mortality from malaria is between 1.5 - 3 million deaths, or between 4000 and 8000 each day. Developing countries are most vulnerable to Malaria and as shown on source 2 Malaria has been spread across many various other countries including in Europe, but these countries have eradicated Malaria.

Malaria is a disease that affects nearly 600 million people and causes more than a million deaths a year, the most coming from children under five. This disease is regularly found in more than 100 countries around the world and affects 40% of the world’s population. It is most commonly transmitted by an infected Anopheles mosquito. The most deadly form of malaria is known as Plasmodium falciparum because almost all deaths from malaria are caused by this specific one. Some of the symptoms that are affiliated with this strand of malaria are the destruction of red blood cells along with complications with the kidneys, lungs, and brain. In more serious cases, it can cause permanent neurological effects and even death. As the Nobel Assembly said at the announcement of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, “Diseases caused by parasites have plagued humankind for a millennium and constitute a major global health problem. In particular, parasitic diseases affect the world’s poorest populations and represent a huge barrier to improving human health and wellbeing”. Youyou Tu, one of the winners of the prize, discovered Artemisinin, “a drug that has significantly reduced the mortality rates for patients suffering from malaria by killing the malaria parasites an early stage of their development.”

First of all, an increase in the use of insecticide-treated bed nets has reduced malaria. Approximately 60% of children under age five and 55% of pregnant women now sleep under mosquito nets, up from only 9 per cent in 2001. Nearly 3 million nets were retreated with insecticide in 2005. In addition, treatments for malaria are becoming more accessible. The Malawi Ministry of Health’s National Malaria Control Program has been able to scale up the distribution of artemisinin-based combination therapies and intermittent preventive treatment for pregnant women. Because of all the prevention efforts and treatments, the incidence of Malaria has decreased over time. For example, Malaria incidence in 2015 was 386 per 1000 population representing a 20% reduction from 484 per 1000 in 2010. Also, the number of deaths due to Malaria has lessened from 5.6% to 3.4% in 2004 and 2009. Eventually, malaria will no longer one of the biggest killers in

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

Annually, 200 million malaria cases are contracted and of these, 90% occur in Sub-Saharan Africa. Approximately one million people die annually, making plasmodium falciparum the most deadly parasitic disease. Contraction of plasmodium falciparum begins when a female Anopheles mosquito injects sporozoites, an early form of plasmodium falciparum, into the host. This sporozite is then transported to the human liver where it undergoes asexual reproduction producing merozoites. The merozoites invade other liver cells and enter the host’s bloodstream, where they invade erythrocyte. After the infection of the erythrocyte, the merozoite is transformed into a trophozoite, which then begins asexual reproduction near the nucleus to form a schizont in the erythrocytic cell. The schizont then asexually reproduces to produce mononucleated merozoites. When the erythrocytic cell ruptures due to the 3,000-4,000 merozoites produced, symptoms of fever and chills are induced within the host. This life cycle is extremely damaging to children; persons under the age of 5 account for 86% of malaria fatalities. Malaria has other characteristic effects, such as yellowing of the skin/eyes (jaundice), sweating, vomiting, weakness, and nausea. Current mortality rates in Africa are 9.33% per 1000 children, which represent 28.2% of all fatalities for those under five. The story changes dramatically as the host

Malaria is an infectious disease carried by mosquitos which is endemic to many tropical and subtropical regions, predominantly Northern Africa. Since 1980, data has been systematically collected in an attempt to expose true Global mortality rates; revealing both positive and negative fluctuations. However since

Around 300-600 million people suffer from malaria each year, and over one million people die from this disease every year, mostly children younger than five. This disease is endemic to over 100 countries in Africa, Asia, Latin America, the Middle East, and the South Pacific, almost 40% of the world population. Malaria is caused by a parasite that is transferred by the bite of an infected female Anopheles mosquito. The most deadly form of malaria is known as Plasmodium falciparum because almost all deaths from malaria are caused by this specific one. In addition to being the deadliest form of malaria, Plasmodium falciparum destroys red blood cells along with causing complications with the kidneys, lungs, and brain. In more serious cases, it can cause permanent neurological effects and even death. As the Nobel Assembly said at the announcement of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, “Diseases caused by parasites have plagued humankind for a millennium and constitute a major global health problem. In particular, parasitic diseases affect the world’s poorest populations and represent a huge barrier to improving human health and wellbeing”. Youyou Tu, one of the winners of the prize, discovered Artemisinin, a drug that has significantly reduced the mortality rates for patients suffering from malaria by killing the malaria parasites an early stage of their development.

Fortunately, much progress has been made in reducing the burden of malaria since the early 2000’s. In 2005, US President Bush issued the President’s Malaria Initiative (PMI) which offered $1.265 billion to fight malaria (PMI, 2013). This has had a significant impact on the battle against malaria in Senegal. The Global Malaria Action Plan has also contributed solutions in collaboration

Of all the diseases mentioned above, malaria presents a threat to the greatest number of people. It is a health problem today in more that 90 countries, with total populations of more than 2,400 million people--about 40% of the world's population. It is estimated that there are up to 500 million cases a year worldwide (Glaxo). A British pharmaceutical company called Glaxo Wellcome recently developed the first new industrially researched malaria remedy since World War II. It is a combination drug containing 2 substances, atovaquone and proguanil, given the commercial name Malarone. While this product has proven to be extremely effective in cases involving drug-resistant strains of malaria, the atovaquone component is very expensive to produce, and each recipient requires a full round of therapy lest a Malarone-resistant strain of malaria develop (Glaxo). Most of the people who need Malarone have no access to consistent health care, and cannot afford to pay for the medicine. With this in mind, Glaxo Wellcome founded a donation program to make up to one million courses of Malarone per year available under carefully controlled conditions to the countries that need it most. Pilot areas selected by the World Health Organization include Kenya and Southeast Asia (Glaxo).

Artificial neural networks are a class of computational structures (Lesk, 2013) made up of several processing elements, called artificial neurons that are connected and organized in layers (Larder et al., 2007). They are capable of generating models for the detection of non linear functions(..). Their algorithms are extensively applied in biology and medicine to solve complex problems, more specifically for prediction or classification of solutions or to refine methodological aspects. (Florence and Balasubramanie, 2010).

Abstract— Health protection is the improvement of health via the diagnosis, treatment and prevention of disease, illness, injury, and other mental impairments in human beings. This system is based on Fuzzy Logic, adopting Mamdani model as the fuzzy inference mechanism and list of medical diseases. With diseases like swine flu and dengue fever, chicken pox, on the rise, which have symptoms, are so closely associated that it sometimes become practically Herculean task to differentiate between the above-scribed diseases based on symptoms. Thus, it becomes inevitable to design such a system that would closely monitor the symptoms and infer the disease based on fuzzy inference system. This work is done by assigning different coefficients to each symptom of a disease and to predict and quantify the severity impact of the recognized disease. For predicting, the cure time of a disease, based on the symptoms. Perdition of cure time is clinically based on hypothetic studies and to estimate the cure time of a disease based on the symptoms. This