Malaria And Its Effects On Human History 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 in existence for thousands of years. Many historical records show that it has affected human civilization greatly by plaguing and causing mass death. The earliest record can be traced back to 2700 BC in China (Cox, 2002). It has been long associated with swamps and insects for hundreds of years but often believed to be the air from swamps causing the plague. The term malaria rooted from two Italian words ‘mala’ and ‘aria’ which literally means bad air. Humanity did not know the true nature of the long thought disease until 1894 when a Scottish physician, Sir Ronald Ross, discovered that it was actually the parasite in mosquito that is causing the malaria.

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.

In North America, the disease had been removed amidst everywhere, but the deep South. The South always harbored the correct environmental conditions for malarious conditions, but the primary factor was the poverty level. During the first World War, at last the government implemented anti-malaria campaigns in the South with the help of the United States Army. Post-war the Rockefeller Foundation, which included Gorgas funded research to suppress anti-malaria campaigns.

In the video “Guns, Germs and Steel: Episode 3.” The overall summary of the episode is how Europe dominated Africa, how they fought through diseases and land wars with local tribes. During this adventure major diseases spread across Africa, affecting Europeans and Africans, causing thousands to die. The main two diseases were smallpox and Malaria, for example in the video it stated that, “It was believed Smallpox originated in the tropical region of Africa, Africans were certainly similar with the disease, they had even developed methods of immunity for life.” This was the advantage they had over the europeans, they were able to protect themselves from Smallpox; avoiding such a dramatic incline their population. Not only did they develop immunization to Smallpox, they tried to fight off Malaria. For example in the video it says, “Native Africans had also developed antibodies against one of the most virulent diseases on the earth, Malaria.” This was because they settled and live in high or dry locations, away from wet and humid areas, which is where mosquitos are generally found, hence why thousands of Europeans died to this disease due to living by rivers and swamps. However, Malaria isn’t the most common disease in Africa now, the most common disease is “Pneumonia and Other Lower Respiratory Tract Infections….Pneumonia alone is responsible for 90% of all lower respiratory tract infections and is one of the most deadly diseases in

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

According to the book, the doctor and his crew of medical professionals learned information about malaria at a lake called Zancudo Cocha, which means “Lake of the Malaria Mosquito”. The word “Malaria” actually can be traced back to Italian roots named mal aria, or bad air. It is caused by the anopheles mosquito, which often had a needle that is infested by parasites. When the anopheles mosquito hits a blood vessel and began extracting blood from the target, the parasites traveled through the bloodstream, which is a part of the cardiovascular system, and found a home at the liver. They would then multiplied and return to the bloodstream to destroy red blood cells, causing fever and chills. Even though there is no effective protection against bug bites, the most effective treatment for most forms of malaria would a synthetic pill called chloroquine.

About one million people die of malaria every year yet it is not highly publicized in the United States. This is because malaria is not as prevalent in the United States as it is in other parts of the world such as Africa, Asia and South America. Numerous amounts of people in the United States have heard about malaria but a lot of people do not know exactly what the disease is. Although people who get the disease are typically poor, malaria is a parasitic disease that can affect anyone, including the healthy and wealthy if the right precautions are not taken. This is evident in the case of Fausto Coppi, a wealthy Italian cyclist who died of malaria in 1959.

There have been many attempts at preventing malaria, none of which have been very successful. These have usually involved protecting human beings from mosquitoes, the dreaded carriers

Ninety percent of all malaria deaths occur in sub-Saharan Africa, which is the location and region of where this issue affects. In a concentrated effort to treat malaria since 2000, 700 million cases have been stopped in Africa, bringing the number of cases down by almost fifty percent. This pleasant news is the result of human interaction. Since the introduction of bed nets, malaria death rates have dropped by sixty percent, saving six million lives. All this progress has to be credited to the scientists who got notified by their respective countries when deaths constantly occur in a certain area through communication. Shortly after getting notified, the researchers travel to sub-Saharan Africa, which requires movement, to analyze the situation

On July 1, 1946, Dr. Joseph W. Mountin started operating in the newly established federal agency known as the Communicable Disease Center (CDC), the predecessor of today's Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the successor of Malaria Control in War Areas (MCWA), located in Atlanta. The location of the CDC is a significant meaning because the South part of the country was known as the malaria zone. In 1942, due to the concern of malaria around the military bases in the south a small unit, the MCWA was established to control. When the CDC took over the MCWA, they continued fighting malaria and other infectious diseases. At that time, the CDC’s goal was to perform research, training, and control of communicable diseases. When Dr. Mountin’s built the CDC, he envisioned a center that focuses on research, monitor and control outbreaks of infectious diseases and provides public health standards to maintain public health throughout the country. Over the years, the organization had expanded its services to all communicable diseases such as the flu, measles, MRSA, etc. environmental health programs, and health statistics. Today, the CDC is a component of the Department of Health and Human Services (History).

Malaria or other similar diseases like malaria has been recognized and encountered by humans for more than 4,000 years. Malaria is caused by the genus Plasmodium parasites, which enter the human body and are transmitted to people through the bite of a mosquito infected with the parasite (Q&A, Malaria). Once the parasite enters the human body, the parasites multiply in the liver and then infect red blood cells. The malaria parasite was first discovered on November 6, 1880, by a French army surgeon named Charles Louis Al phonse Laveran. While stationed in

The medicine field encountered many scientific discoveries and there were many improvements during World War Two than there had ever been before. Among the many improvements was Malaria treatment. Malaria is a parasitic disease spread by mosquitoes and it causes one to three million deaths annually. Malaria was first identified in 1880 and the transmission of mosquitoes was identified in 1898 (Carlisle). Many organizations aided in the preventing Malaria to spread. The CDC (centers for disease control and prevention) was successful and helped prevent Malaria from occurring during the World War Two time period. By the end of World War Two, success was made in the malarial control program. Not only that, by 1951, Malaria was eradicated from

Malaria is considered one of the most serious and life-threatening public health problems in the world. According to World Health Organization, more than 3 billion people live in areas classified as being at risk from malaria, with nearly 200 million cases.1 Approximately, 750,000 deaths occur every year, primarily among children, due to malaria and its complications.1 Children less than 5 years of age are more vulnerable to be affected by malaria.2 In 2015, about 438,000 malaria deaths were reported, of which estimated 69% were children under 5 years of age.2

Malaria is a parasite that has been impacting the world for the past couple of centuries. The illness associated with malaria gives intense fevers, chills, terrible headaches, muscle pains and can be deadly if not treated properly. Although overall malaria cases have decreased from 262 million in 2000 to 214 million in 2015, it is still an issue to be concerned about today.1 There have been developments of a vaccine against this parasite, but the parasite has adapted to the vaccine and developed a resistance to it, thus rendering it ineffective. The p. falciparum and p. vivax strains of malaria is what is causing problems as these resistant strains have popped up in much of Asia and Africa and a couple of countries in South America.1 This can potentially be a problem for the military and more specifically the Air Force as multiple countries where the Air Force deploys are infected with these resistant strains of malaria. It can be seen through the background and history of the fight against this parasite that the chemistry behind an antimalarial vaccine is important to the Air Force.