QUESTION:

Is malaria caused by the absence of one of the following in diet: bacteria, virus, fungi, protozoa?

ANSWER:

If I understand your question correctly, you are asking if malaria is caused by the absence of a particular organism from a person’s diet—in fact, malaria is caused by a protozoan, but infection is not linked to a person’s diet. Instead, people are infected with the protozoans (small, single-celled organisms—in the case of malaria, they belong to the genus Plasmodium) when a mosquito feeds on the person’s blood. The malaria parasites are present in the mosquito’s saliva gland, and enter the human bloodstream as the mosquito is drinking. When a mosquito feeds on a person already infected with malaria, it picks up malaria parasites in the blood it takes in. This is how malaria is transmitted, in the vast majority of cases.