Malaria Is A Parasite That Has Been Impacting The World For The Past Couple Of Centuries

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.

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

Before the research I knew malaria is a disease which occurs mostly in poor, tropical and subtropical areas of the world. I also knew people get malaria by being bitten by an infective mosquito.

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

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.

"About Malaria." Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. CDC, n.d. Web. 10 Dec. 2015. .

During the first decade of the 21st century, malaria-related morbidity and mortality declined dramatically in many Kilifi, but not in all, parts of sub-Saharan Africa. Insecticide-treated bednets (ITNs), rapid economic development of the continent and the introduction of artemisinin-containing combinations as first-line treatment for uncomplicated malaria played important in the controlling malaria.

Malaria is a disease that has wrought history since the dawn of time itself. It has conquered some of the mightiest warlords in history including Tutankhamen, Alexander the Great, Attila the Hun and Genghis Khan. The earliest records of malaria symptoms date back to 2700 BCE, first described in the Nei Ching, an ancient Chinese medical script. The Chinese described the prominent symptoms of malaria, discussing the connection between recurring fevers and enlarged spleens. In 1550 BCE the Ebers Papyrus, an ancient Egyptian medical script, mentioned patients suffering from fevers, shivering, vomiting, convulsions and also enlarged spleens. In 600 BCE records of malaria-like fevers rampant in Mesopotamia were found documented on cuneiform tablets. By 400 BCE the symptoms of malaria became widely recognizable in Ancient Greece, where malaria was held responsible for huge population declines in large cities and states. Hippocrates, traditionally regarded as the father of modern medicine, documented the main symptoms of malaria and made extensive notes in the literature of the time. He was also the first to recognise the relationship between occurrences of fevers and close proximity to stagnant waters. The Romans also discovered this connection between fevers and swampy marshes and notably pioneered the first preventative efforts against malaria by draining these swamps. Thus from the medieval Italian language the term ‘malaria’ was coined: mala aria –

The pathway of malaria transmission from the mosquito to a person is detailed as after the mosquito has the parasite, the mosquito then bites the human, the parasite is released into the human, the parasite then goes to the liver and replicates itself, after replication the parasite enter the blood stream and attach to a red blood cell; the parasite is undetected by the immune system because it is attached to the red blood cells, the red blood cells is deformed from the parasite infection. The deformed red blood cell shape makes it stick to the cell membrane until it explodes and little particles from the red blood cell rushes through out the body; the cells goes through the body and enter other vitals

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 millennia 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.

Malaria has been spread by various factors, from contaminated blood transfusion to mosquitos, being the leading carrier of malaria. It can have damaging effect on the human body, and with it constantly changing, the malaria protozoa becomes harder for doctors to treat. Malaria, causing as 1.2 million deaths in 2011, has had a global impact “(Mcneil 1). It is still heavily impacts people in many tropical areas (“Disease” 202). New natural remedies have been tested to attempt to combat malaria (Avasthi 1).Malaria can have a deadly impact on all types of people, including pregnant women (Gomes 1). The malaria parasite is changing to resist treatments, and doctors are researching how to defeat it (Avasthi 1). Malaria is from genus plasmodium, which

Malaria is an ancient disease. The name itself traces its origins to Medieval Italian: “mal aria” or bad air referred to a swampy area of Rome known as the Pontina that saw very high infection rates (Beltz, 2011). To this day, the disease continues to be one of the most important parasitic infections known to man. According to the World Health Organization, 3.4 million people may be considered at risk on a global scale and estimates indicate that there were 207 million cases in 2012 with 627,000 deaths (WHO, 2013). More than 85% of these cases occur on the continent of Africa as well as 90% of the deaths. In highly endemic regions, malaria is more of an issue of morbidity than mortality, although the majority of individuals may be parasitized at any given time only a minority exhibit severe symptoms (Marsh & Snow, 1997). Instead these countries are at a significant economic disadvantage due to ill workers, lack of tourism and company investments, not to mention the educational loss future generations also incur.