QUESTION:

If someone had malaria but they don’t have it any more can they give it to someone else?

ANSWER:

Regardless of whether a person is still infected with malaria or not, malaria can almost never be transmitted directly from one person to another.

Normally, malaria is only transmitted via infected mosquitoes; so, a mosquito has to bite an infected person, and then bite another person, and the malaria parasites are transmitted via the mosquito’s saliva to the second person. The exception to this is blood transfusions; in area where blood is not thoroughly screened, there have been cases of a person becoming infected with malaria after having received blood from a person with a malaria infection.

Secondly, although the actual disease cannot be transmitted this way, pregnant women who are infected with malaria can pass antigens and antibodies to their unborn child via the placenta, which can cause problems to the baby. For this reason, and others, preventing malaria in pregnant women is a huge priority in global malaria prevention.