What is Malaria?

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QUESTION

What is Malaria?

ANSWER

Malaria is a disease caused by parasites of the genus Plasmodium. Transmitted by mosquitoes, there are several different kinds of malaria distributed throughout the tropical and sub-tropical regions of the world, causing somewhere between 300-500 million cases of disease each year, and as many as 1 million deaths. In fact, malaria is one of the biggest killers of children under the age of five in sub-Saharan Africa, one of the regions of the world where the burden from malaria is the highest. Malaria is usually an acute disease, manifesting itself with severe fever, chills, headache and often nausea as well. Some types of malaria can have relapsing episodes over a time period of many years.

Having said this, malaria is easily preventable, through avoiding mosquito bites by wearing appropriate clothing and sleeping under insecticide-treated bednets, or through taking preventative medication (called prophylaxis). Malaria is also treatable once symptoms appear, through ingesting safe, effective and relatively cheap drugs. With such control measures at hand, you may ask why malaria is still such a huge problem in our world; the answer is that delivering control strategies and treatment to populations most at risk is difficult, and often countries with high malaria burdens don’t have efficient and effective health systems in place to coordinate control efforts.

International non-governmental organisations such as the World Health Organisation, as well as a multitude of non-profit organisations such as the Malaria Consortium and Malaria No More, work tirelessly to bring malaria control and treatment to the places that need it most, with the aim to eradicate malaria as a disease of public health importance.

How to Take BFMP Specimen for Malaria

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QUESTION

How to take a bfmp specimen?

ANSWER

BFMP, when relating to malaria, refer to blood films for malaria parasites. Usually, fingerprick or venous blood is collected from the patient and used to create both a thin and a thick blood film. If using venous blood, the sample should be mixed with an anticoagulant in a vacuum tube. For both thin and thick films, a drop of blood is first placed on a clean glass microscope slide. For the thin smear, take a second “spreader” slide, and place the short end at the edge of the drop of blood. Wait for the blood to seep along the whole edge of the spreader slide, then push the droplet forward quickly and smoothly to spread it thinly across the rest of the slide. For the thick film, take the corner of a second slide and use it to smear the droplet of blood into a circle of 1-2 cm diameter.

You should be able to read newsprint through it, but it should not be so large as to risk dropping off the edge of the slide. When both films have completely dried, thin films are fixed in 100% methanol before staining; thick films are not fixed. A variety of different stains can be used for detection of malaria parasites, though commonly used ones include Giemsa or eosin.

Irregular Quotidian Fever

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QUESTION

Why quotidian fever is irregular?

ANSWER

Actually, the fever cycles associated with all types of malaria can be irregular. This is particular true in the initial stages of the fever, when the merozoites (the form of the parasite that leaves the liver to infect red blood cells) from different infection broods mature at different rates.

Over a few cycles of reproduction, the maturation synchronises and the parasites burst from the red blood cells in unison, creating more regular cycles of fever (no one really knows how the malaria parasites times emergence so closely!). P. falciparum may also always exhibit irregular cycles of fever, again due to asynchronous destruction of red blood cells.

In What Countries is Malaria Found?

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QUESTION

What countries can malaria be found in?

ANSWER

Malaria is found on every continent of the world except Antartica—however, regular transmission every year mainly only occurs in Central and South America, Africa, parts of the Middle East, Asia and parts of Oceania/the Pacific Islands.

The world’s highest areas of malaria prevalence and transmission occur in sub-Saharan Africa, followed by India, south-east Asia (especially the Indo-Pacific islands, such as Papua New Guinea) and parts of Central America and northern South America.

Based on the latest available data, the top five countries reporting the most annual malaria deaths were Kenya, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Cote d’Ivoire and Burkina Faso. However, the top five countries with the highest number of malaria cases per 100,000 members of the population were Guinea, Botswana, Burundi, Zambia and Malawi.

The Solomon Islands have the highest number of malaria cases per 100,000 outside of Africa, followed by Yemen. Note that these statistics are highly dependent on quality of diagnosis, treatment and reporting!

Malaria Disorder

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QUESTION

what is the malaria disorder?

ANSWER

Malaria is caused by a parasite called Plasmodium, which is transmitted via the bites of infected mosquitoes. In the human body, the parasites multiply in the liver, and then infect red blood cells. Usually, people get malaria by being bitten by an infective female Anopheles mosquito.

Symptoms of malaria include fever and flu-like illness, including shaking chills, headache, muscle aches, and tiredness. Nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea may also occur. Malaria may cause anemia and jaundice (yellow coloring of the skin and eyes) because of the loss of red blood cells. Symptoms usually appear between 10 and 15 days after the mosquito bite. If not treated, malaria can quickly become life-threatening by disrupting the blood supply to vital organs. Infection with one type of malaria, Plasmodium falciparum, if not promptly treated, may cause kidney failure, seizures, mental confusion, coma, and death. In many parts of the world, the parasites have developed resistance to a number of malaria medicines.

Why is malaria dangerous?

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QUESTION

Why is malaria dangerous?

ANSWER

Malaria is dangerous because if left untreated, it can be deadly. This is particularly true of Plasmodium falciparum, which can rapidly escalate into severe disease with cerebral (brain) complications.

However, other forms of malaria, such as P. vivax and P. knowlesi, can also be fatal if untreated. The people most at risk from severe malaria are pregnant women and young children; in addition pregnant women who contract malaria are at risk of passing the disease to their foetus either during pregnancy or during birth (so-called congenital malaria) which can have negative effects on the baby, such as poor growth and low birth weight.

Malaria Parasite Seminar

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QUESTION

i am lab technician, and I am requesting a seminar of malaria parasite. Thanks.

ANSWER

Thank you for your question. Perhaps if you could provide us with a bit more detail as to what you would like to see in a seminar, and we can try to create a seminar-like presentation that we can make available on our website. Alternatively, if you let us know where you are based (city, country) we may be able to put you in touch with malaria researchers or practitioners near where you live who can point you in the direction of local seminars, or can help organise one.

How is Malaria Spread?

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QUESTION

How is malaria spread?

ANSWER

Malaria is caused by a parasite called Plasmodium, which is transmitted via the bites of infected mosquitoes. In the human body, the parasites multiply in the liver, and then infect red blood cells. Usually, people get malaria by being bitten by an infective female Anopheles mosquito. Only Anopheles mosquitoes can transmit malaria and they must have been infected through a previous blood meal taken on an infected person. When a mosquito bites an infected person, a small amount of blood is taken in which contains microscopic malaria parasites. About 1 week later, when the mosquito takes its next blood meal, these parasites mix with the mosquito’s saliva and are injected into the person being bitten.

Because the malaria parasite is found in red blood cells of an infected person, malaria can also be transmitted through blood transfusion, organ transplant, or the shared use of needles or syringes contaminated with blood. Malaria may also be transmitted from a mother to her unborn infant before or during delivery (“congenital” malaria).


What are the Symptoms of Malaria?

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QUESTION

What are malaria symptoms?

ANSWER

Symptoms of malaria include fever and flu-like illness, including shaking chills, headache, muscle aches, and tiredness. Nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea may also occur. Malaria may cause anemia and jaundice (yellow coloring of the skin and eyes) because of the loss of red blood cells.

Symptoms usually appear between 10 and 15 days after the mosquito bite. If not treated, malaria can quickly become life-threatening by disrupting the blood supply to vital organs. Infection with one type of malaria, Plasmodium falciparum, if not promptly treated, may cause kidney failure, seizures, mental confusion, coma, and death. In many parts of the world, the parasites have developed resistance to a number of malaria medicines.

For most people, symptoms begin 10 days to 4 weeks after infection, although a person may feel ill as early as 7 days or as late as 1 year later. Two kinds of malaria, P. vivax and P. ovale, can occur again (relapsing malaria). In P. vivax and P. ovale infections, some parasites can remain dormant in the liver for several months up to about 4 years after a person is bitten by an infected mosquito. When these parasites come out of hibernation and begin invading red blood cells (“relapse”), the person will become sick.

Infection with malaria parasites may result in a wide variety of symptoms, ranging from absent or very mild symptoms to severe disease and even death. Malaria disease can be categorized as uncomplicated or severe (complicated) . In general, malaria is a curable disease if diagnosed and treated promptly and correctly.

Malaria in Africa

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QUESTION

Why do Africans catch malaria more than others?

ANSWER

There are a number of reasons why malaria is more widespread in Africa than in many other parts of the world. However, it is worth mentioning that other parts of the world, such as India and south-east Asia, also have very high prevalence of malaria, especially in rural areas.

The high transmission of malaria is Africa is predominantly due to two factors: climate and control measures, or rather, the lack of them.

Malaria is spread by mosquitoes of the genus Anopheles, and so in order to persist, an area must have a suitable temperature for the development of both the mosquito as well as the malaria parasite. This limits malaria transmission to the sub-tropics and tropics, primarily. The area must also have sufficient rainfall and areas of standing water, since the malaria mosquitoes lay their eggs in stagnant water, which the larvae live in until they pupate into adults. This means that malaria transmission cannot occur in desert regions.

Unfortunately, a large portion of Africa, and particularly West, Central and East Africa, are climatically very well suited to the development of mosquitoes and thus the transmission of malaria.

In addition, many countries in Africa are not as developed as other tropical countries. This means that health resources have not been as focused on control efforts in Africa—for example, Malaysia very successfully reduced malaria transmission by a huge amount through a combination of vector control (namely spraying households with insecticides and filling up stagnant water pools so larvae couldn’t develop), distribution of bednets (which reduces mosquito biting rate) and better diagnoses and treatment facilities.

All of these efforts are beginning to be developed and rolled out in Africa as well, so hopefully in the near future we will also see a dramatic reduction in malaria transmission in Africa.