Malaria Is An Infectious Disease

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.

Plasmodium falciparum is a protozoan parasite. It is unique of the class of Plasmodium that is the foundation and cause malaria in individuals. There are other Plasmodium species that can cause malaria in humans. Nevertheless P. falciparum is the most common, virulent, and deadly. P. falciparum communicable by the female Anopheles mosquito.

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.”

Malaria has been a huge problem among many developing nations over the past century. The amount of people in the entire world that die from malaria each year is between 700,000 and 2.7 million. 75% of these deaths are African children (Med. Letter on CDC & FDA, 2001). 90% of the malaria cases in the world are located in Sub-Saharan Africa. Once again, the majority of these deaths are of children (Randerson, 2002). The numbers speak for themselves. Malaria is a huge problem and needs to be dealt with immediately.

In the United States, many diseases like the flu are treated easily by available drugs administered by pharmacies. However, in third world countries like Africa, medical supply is not affordable in environments festered with contaminated water supply and lack of food sources. Sub-Saharan Africa is plagued by many diseases, but the most common disease is Malaria. Malaria is a type of disease that is spread by the female mosquito of the genus Anopheles. An individual will start to experience high fevers and chills. If left untreated, the individual could possibly die (Heyneman, 2014). Antimalarial drugs are a type of treatment that can counteract this disease. Doxycycline is an antimalarial drug that is commonly used, however its

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

The illness associated with the malaria parasite was first thought to be a result of poisonous mists drifting from marshes hence its name meaning “bad air” in Italian. Of course it was unbeknownst back then that it was actually caused by the female anopheles mosquito which tends to live near still water such as marshes.2 Although it was unknown what actually caused the symptoms of 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 –

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

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)

Of the many diseases spread by insects, none are actually caused by the insects themselves but by other organisms passed on when they feed or bite. Insects are capable of spreading diseases caused by many different types of microorganisms including bacteria, viruses, protozoan and others. Mosquitoes have earned the title of "the most deadly creature on earth." This is due to the fact that they spread serious epidemic diseases such as Malaria, Yellow Fever, African Sleeping Sickness, and West Nile Virus.