Malari Public Health Problem

Ecological factors that encourage the Anopheles mosquito, and thus also encourage the prevalence of malaria include: being near the equator, densely populated areas, warmer temperatures, standing water, maintaining water for irrigation and deforested areas. (Holy p.1)

About 1,500 cases of malaria are diagnosed in the United States annually, mostly in returned travelers” (Global Health - Division of Parasitic Diseases , 2010). Malaria risk is not distributed homogeneously throughout all countries. Some destinations have malaria transmission occurring throughout the whole country, while in others it occurs in defined pockets so the traveler should be weary of areas whose climate is conducive to mosquitoes.

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

Aim - To explore the impacts Malaria has on citizens of developing countries which are effect by the disease.

Also, human population movement from higher transmission areas jeopardizes reintroduction and resurgence in malaria-free regions, and in addition has undermined elimination works in the past. For that reason, it is important to understand the patterns of parasite dispersal in order to target control by pinpointing regions where the imported infections originate from and where they play a part in transmission.

(Fairhurst RM, Wellems TE. Plasmodium species (Malaria). In: Mandell GL, Bennett JE, Dolin R, eds. Principles and Practice of Infectious Diseases . 7th ed. Philadelphia, Pa: Elsevier Churchill Livingstone; 2009: p. 3071-3072)

Around the world there has been shifts in the transportation of the leech, which is involved with Malaria (Guerra et al., 2006). Deforestation is likely to be at a higher level in the years to come (Guerra et al., 2006). Because of the increase in Deforestation there will be an increase in Malaria as well because of the link between the two. Deforestation and the disease Malaria causes more Malaria exposure in the Americas and declines in Asia. Over the past couple of years there has been a huge increase in Malaria (Snow et al., 2006). Deforestation in areas such as; the Amazon, Africa, and Asia have been increasing dramatically (Guerra at al., 2006). Many different things can cause increases in Malaria. It can be caused by changes in environment by deforestation, changing the forest into rice paddies is a more stable environment for Malaria (Guerra et al., 2006). Depending on the different type of Malaria, deforestation can cause an increase in certain types of Malaria depending on the type of environment the Malaria likes (Guerra

Malaria is a major public health problem in most of the tropical regions of the world including Papua New Guinea (PNG). As stated by Allen et al., 1996 “In many tropical and sub-tropical regions, malaria remains a major cause of mortality” (Allen et al., 1996: pg1). In Papua New Guinea, being at the risk of getting infection is very high because studies reported that 90% of the total population are at the risk of being infected (Pulford, 2012: pg1). As a result, the highest out patients complains reported in PNG is malaria and is one of the leading cause of deaths, even it’s a preventable and curable disease (Pulford, Mueller et al., 2012: pg1). It will take a long time to eliminate malaria in PNG because of the geography of the country. There are a lot of swampy areas creating an environment conducive for the anopheles mosquito to breed. Therefore, malaria can only be controlled. Control measure such as vector control and personal protection have been carried out in the last eight years by the PNG National Department of Health (NDoH) under the Global Fund to fight AIDs, tuberculosis and Malaria (GFATM) program (Hetzel, Gideon et al., 2012: pg2) however, there seem to still be a need for increased net usage across the country. Therefore, is the intervention in encouraging Insecticide Treated mosquito nets usage among febrile patients in PNG effective?

3 separate groups of mosquitos which carried the parasite which caused malaria. One of the groups was sprayed with the fungus, another group sprayed with the wild type fungus and the last group weren’t altered.

Malaria is a disease whose effects can be felt worldwide. Not only does the disease touch adults, unfortunately the major population affected by the disease is children under the age of 5yrs old and pregnant women. Malaria is the third largest killer of children worldwide. The number of malaria related deaths per years has decreased through the years form 300 million cases worldwide in 1999 to 198 million cases in 2013, also malaria related deaths have decreased by a sum of 60% from the year of 2000 to 2015, however the number of deaths (438,000 in 2014) is extremely high and can be drastically lowered or even diminished completely with the right resources. These resources have proven to be available and successful in some particularly wealthy areas of the world including Brazil, Eritrea, and Vietnam, yet malaria is still very prevalent and fatal in others namely Kenya, Nigeria and Rwanda. The question is why? What roles does government play in this international issue? What steps can be taken to rid the world of malaria completely?

Knowledge gaps exists in the community and health workers when it comes to controlling and eliminating malaria. According to Raman et al. (2016), knowledge gaps exist on how the disease is transmitted, implementation of surveillance systems, and low perception of malaria risk. Likewise, Singh, Brown and Rogerson (2013) found out that there were knowledge gaps in antenatal care, use of bed nets and mosquito density when employing vector control as a malaria prevention intervention. Similar knowledge gaps have also been identified by the World Health Organization report that argues that most people in the sub-Saharan Africa cannot access diagnostic malaria testing and treatment because of lack of awareness in the community and among caregivers (2015).

Infectious diseases are the leading cause of death all over the world [1]. Malaria, also called plasmodium infection, is one of the most important human infectious diseases threatening the lives of millions of people every year. According to WHO malaria report, globally, an estimated 3.2 billion people in 97 countries and territories are at risk of being infected with malaria and developing disease, and 1.2 billion are at high risk [2]. Although the disease has been eradicated in most areas, it’s still widespread in some regions [2]. The biggest challenges in controlling malaria disease are the emergence of anti-malarial drug resistance and insecticide resistance in parasite and mosquito, respectively [3-5]. Therefore, there is an urgent need to develop novel intervention strategies such as vaccines to reduce the burden of malaria morbidity and mortality. Malaria is commonly associated with poverty and has a major negative effect on economic development [6]. Oral vaccines offer exciting possibilities for reducing the burden of diseases especially in developing regions of the world. Oral vaccines are inexpensive, easily administered (needle-free) and capable of being stored and transported without refrigeration [7]. In contrast to injected vaccines, oral vaccines are mucosal-targeted, which cause stimulation of systemic as well as mucosal

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)

According to the CDC, “Malaria is an extreme and from time to time lethal sickness because of a parasite that typically infects a certain species of mosquitoes which feeds on human blood. Four varieties of malaria parasites infect people; Plasmodium falciparum, P. vivax, P. ovale, and P. malariae. Similarly, P. knowlesi is a type of specie of malaria that infects macaques in Southeast Asia and additionally can be a zoonotic infection; transferring from an animal to human.” Plasmodium falciparum is the form of malaria that frequently causes severe and life-threatening malaria. It’s not very unusual in the south of the Sahara wasteland in Africa. People, who are closely exposed to the bites of mosquitoes infected with P. falciparum, are prone to dying from malaria. Human beings who have little immunity to malaria, together with younger kids and pregnant girls or tourists coming from regions without malaria, are more likely to have a worse prognosis. Due to malaria arising in the south of the Sahara in Africa, concentrated deaths arise in children below five years of age. Poor human beings living in rural regions, who lack access to physical care, are at greater risk for this disorder.