The Effects Of Malaria On The World's Poorest

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.

Aim - To explore the impacts Malaria has on citizens of developing countries which are effect by the disease.

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

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 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.

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 –

“Hunger kills more people every year than AIDS, Malaria, and tuberculosis combined.”(World Food Program). Of the places in which Hunger is a serious problem one place is in Sub-Saharan Africa and Zimbabwe. The cause of this hunger, to realize and study the victim’s and their struggle for food, and looking to see what is being done are all things to look into and see how people’s lives are impacted are all things to look at.

Malaria is a major public health concern due to the fact that more than half of the world’s population is currently at risk of developing this disease (WHO, 2015). The regions that are currently affected by the various species of malaria are essential in the analysis for the future global transmission rate. In other words, to utilize the information generated by the Hadley Centre global Climate Model (HADCM) 3 programs, we must first understand the characteristics and features of the regions that are currently affected before we can determine the future impact of this disease. Current data indicates that the P. vivax is capable of living in regions with temperate and sub-tropical climate (Martens et al., 1999). In contrast the P. falciparum and P. malariae are restricted to regions with tropical climate, while the P. ovale is found mostly in Africa (Martens et al., 1999). However, if more regions of the world experience a shift in climate pattern, it can be argued that there will be an increase of the breeding ground available for this vector to grow and reproduce. As of date, all regions of the world are experiencing the effect of the current changes in climate pattern; therefore additional changes will have a global impact.

Prevalence of infant malaria cases has caused much alarm among stakeholders in the health sector; communities, policy-makers, and health workers alike. According to the 2015 Center for Disease Control statistics in an article by Ceesay et al. (2015), the overall prevalence of malaria among infants aged 6 months or less, especially in Sub-Saharan countries, was 11.8%. These astonishing figures are attributed to the neglecting of newborns in the assumption that they are protected against malaria by the presence of fetal hemoglobin and transferrable maternal antibodies (Ceesay et al., 2015). This lack of attention on malaria infection among infants, therefore, justifies the

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)

The most commonly used medication which treats malaria is atovaquone-proguanil, riamet. There are also other medication chloroquine, atovaquone-proguanil, artemether-lumefantrine, mefloquine, quinine, quinidine doxycycline, clindamycin, artesunate (not licensed in the United States, but available through the CDC malaria)(CDC, 2017). These medications are effective because they are active against the parasite forms in the blood. Atovaquone-proguanil fights the parasite by interfering with the growth of the parasites which are present in the red blood cells. Riamet is made of two ingredients known as artemether and lumefantrine. Artemether and lumefantrine both work to interfere with ability in which malaria parasites can convert haem into