Malaria As A Vector Borne Disease

Malaria is a very contagious parasite transmitted through mosquitoes to humans. Those at risk are individuals living in areas conducive to the breeding of mosquitoes, especially those that allow the mosquitoes to complete their growth cycle. Everyone is at risk

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.

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

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.

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.”

The symptoms vary because patients are diagnosed with having either uncomplicated or severe malaria. This is due to the fact that different kinds of malaria range in severity. For instance, ,P. falciparum and P. knowlesi infections can cause rapidly progressive severe illness and lead to death death while the other species, P. malariae, P. vivax, or P. ovale are less likely to cause such severe manifestations. Furthermore, P. vivax and P. ovale infections also require treatment for the hypnozoite forms that remain dormant in the liver and can cause a relapsing infection. Finally, P. falciparum and P. vivax species have varying drug resistance patterns in different geographic regions. For P. falciparum and P. knowlesi infections, the urgent initiation of appropriate therapy is especially

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

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

Malaria is a virus transmitted by a vector known as the mosquito. When pregnant female mosquitos hunger for human blood spreads the virus. Malaria can also be spread via blood to blood, such as transfusions, organ donation, and childbirth. Mosquitoes acquire the virus when biting an infected human. Malaria has two hosts the human and the mosquito. The virus is transmitted from the mosquito via saliva when being bit. The parasite begins it journey in humans in the liver then in a week going into the blood and disrupting normal red blood cell activity. When a mosquito has a blood meal from a infected person the parasite is the transmitted and develops to become a cyst and entering infective state traveling to the mosquitoes salivary glands waiting to be transmitted to a new host.

People infected with malaria often experience fever, chills, and flu-like illnesses and then they may develop severe complications and die if left untreated.

Malaria is considered one of the deadliest pandemics in the world. It kills 1 million people every year, and kills a child every 30 seconds. Ebola and the Black Death look wimpy compared to it, even when we know how to cure Malaria. But why is it so deadly, and how can we stop it?

In 2012, the recent statistics provided by World Health Organisation showed approximately 207 million cases of malaria worldwide and an estimation of 627000 deaths (WHO, 2014). It also displayed that mortality rate of the disease has globally declined by 42% but in African region, the mortality rate of malaria is about 49%, which is a slight difference when compared to the worldwide mortality rate (WHO, 2014). Statistics showed that most mortality occur amongst children residing in Africa, in which a child “dies every minute from malaria” (WHO, 2014). Although there have been an advancement in knowledge relating to the disease, it is continuously a major cause of morbidity and mortality in the world.

Malaria symptoms were first described in ancient Chinese medical writings. Around late 2000 BCE, several characteristics of malaria were described in the Nei Ching (edited by Emperor Huangdi). During the second century BCE, the Artemisia annua was characterized in the medical writing found in the Mawangdui Tomb. Products of the Artemisia annua extract are very useful and effective antimalarial drugs, especially when combined with other medicines. News of malaria soon was spreading in Greece. By the fourth century BCE, malaria was the cause for the loss of many city-state populations. An ancient Greek physician who is traditionally regarded as the father of medicine, Hippocrates, noted the first standard symptoms of malaria in Greece. By 495-429 B.C, there was a large-scale of references of malaria in the literature of ancient Greece.