Malaria is Passed to Humans through a Parasitic Mosquito

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.

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.

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.

Would a country free of malaria still be just as poor? Malaria is frequently referred to as a disease of the poor. Malaria is a disease that kills millions of people in tropical areas where malaria carrying mosquitoes swarm in the jungle (Friedlander). Malaria is caused by tiny living things called Protozoans. When an infected mosquito bites a person, the protozoans enter the person’s blood. They live inside red blood cells as parasites. They take everything they need to live from the cells, which kill the cells (Britannica). Malaria is one of the most serious health problems facing the world today. The World Health Organization estimates that over 300 million new cases of malaria arise a year, with approximately two to three million deaths resulting from

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

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

By altering the genes of mosquitoes the scientists want to get rid of this disease. By making the mosquito body chemistry toxic to the malaria parasite. There are other methods were scientist try to trap the parasite inside the mosquitoes gut into its salivary glands, molecules on the parasite surface fit certain receptors on mosquitoes tissue that allow free passage and scientist think they can block those receptors. By blocking these receptors the parasite dies inside the mosquito and the mosquito can no longer carry Malaria. Another approach would be when scientist insert a toxin to kill the parasite.

Between 1998-2004, the malaria cases in Panama quadrupled. And globally, the malaria death toll has grown inescapably since 1981. In 1995, Europe suffered 90,000 cases of malaria. Today, eight times more malaria patients arrive at the clinics and hospitals across Europe than they did in the 1970’s. Mosquitoes infect between 250 million and 500 million people with malaria every year and close to 1 million perish. Human beings have suffered the disease for more than 500,000 years. This plague is very deadly.

The fertilization occasion produces a zygote which sooner or later develops into an ookinete (Gilles et. al., 1993).The zygote and ookinete are the best diploid tiers of P. falciparum. The diploid ookinete is an invasive form of P. falciparum within the mosquito. It traverses the peritrophic membrane of the mosquito midgut and crosses the midgut epithelium (Gilles et. al., 1993). Once through the epithelium, the ookinete enters the basil lamina, and bureaucracy an oocyst. At some stage in the ookinete stage, genetic recombination can occur. This takes vicinity if the ookinete become formed from male and female gametes derived from special populations. This could occur if the human host contained multiple populations of the parasite, or if the mosquito consumed multiple inflamed people within a quick time-frame (Bruce Chwatt, 1985). Over the length of one-three weeks, the oocyst grows to a length of tens to masses of micrometres. at some point of this time, more than one nuclear divisions arise. After maturation, it divides to form multiple haploid sporozoites in a method called sporogony. Immature sporozoites damage through the oocyst wall into the haemolymph, then migrate to the salivary glands and whole their differentiation. Once mature, the sporozoites can continue to infect a human host throughout a subsequent mosquito chunk (Gilles et. al.,

Venezuela is known for its gold mining activities that take place there. These mines are the breeding sites for mosquitoes. The rate of malaria here is very high but they try to fight it. It was the first nation to be certified by the WHO for eradicating malaria in its most populated areas. The malaria is spread to the society once the miners come back home. Sometimes the number of victims rises up to a point where they take all malaria medicine all (Rodriguez, 2014). By 1994, the malaria deaths had fallen by 9%. As days are going by, there are some changes in the handling of the malaria issue. Though there is a lot going in Venezuela, there is shortage of nearly all anti-malaria drugs. The government of Venezuela should ensure that neighbors are not attacked.

Malaria’s age speaks of an adaptability to it, when comparing a sample from ancient China to one today there are huge differences to be seen. This indicates that Malaria has a large past that there is very little known about. Possibly the answer to the ideal treatment lives in its past. By looking at the past it is possible to see how to form the future.

Malaria is considered as one of the deadliest diseases around the world. The cases of malaria are getting worse and more serious especially in the African countries. Almost 40% of the world’s population could be affected by the disease. Malaria could cause over 1 million deaths each year and could result to enormous damages to human and social-being (Gething et al., 2014). Most of the international organizations concerning human health have been working on provisions for early the diagnosis and treatment of the disease as well as selective measures such as vector control.

The main cause of Malaria is Plasmodium falciparum or plasmodium vivax, which is carry by the female Anopheles mosquito. As the female Anopheles mosquito bits on the human to take blood meal, the Plasmodium falciparum gets injected to the blood stream via mosquito’s saliva and travels through blood stream and eventually gets to the liver. In liver the Plasmodium falciparum being to multiply asexually. Next they start rupturing liver cells and release back to the blood stream. In the blood the parasite being to invade and multiply again inside the red blood cells. This time they start to reproduce sexually within the blood stream. This occurs until the red blood cells burst and releasing the parasite once again into the blood stream. Bursting of the red blood cells lead to acute anemia. This cycle happens over and over again and each time cause Chile, fever sweating. Rupturing the red blood cells and high temperature fever will eventually lead to death. Next the uninfected female Anopheles mosquito bites on the infected human and by sucking its

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)