Malaria Month

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QUESTION

What is the national month for malaria?

ANSWER

I’m not exactly sure I understand your question. If you are asking if there is a specific month when malaria is the worst, that depends on where you are. Malaria transmission is highly seasonal, because the mosquitoes that transmit the disease require pools of standing water in order to reproduce. Therefore in many places, transmission is highest during the rainy or wet season.

However, if you mean if there is a specific month dedicated to raising awareness about malaria and control, then the answer is yes, at least for certain countries. India, for example, has declared each June between 2005 and 2012 to be “Anti-malaria Month,” when a big push is made nation-wide to educate people about preventing malaria, implement early diagnosis and treatment and organise vector control efforts. June was selected as it is the month before the start of the monsoon season, when malaria transmission increases due to the heavy rains.

Malaria Survey in Mumbai, India

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QUESTION:

I want the past year’s malaria survey in Mumbai and other states.

ANSWER:

The Lancet, one of the world’s leading medical journals, recently published an article summarising the mortality of malaria in India. The citation for the article is as follows:

Dhingra, Jha, Sharma, Cohen, Jotkar, Rodriguez, Bassani, Suraweera, Laxminarayan and Peto (2010), ‘Adult and child mortality in India: a nationally representative mortality survey’, The Lancet, 376: 1768-1774.

A slightly older article (from 2007) discusses the burden of malaria in India:

Kumar, Valecha, Jain and Dash (2007), ‘Burden of malaria in India: A retrospective and prospective view’, American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene, 77: 69-78.

Malaria Cases in West Bengal

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QUESTION:

What is the number of Malaria patients in West Bengal?

ANSWER:

West Bengal is one of the states considered highly endemic for malaria in India. In 1998, cases in West Bengal comprised approximately 6% of the total number of cases of all malaria in India (corresponding to 129,000 of the total 2.15 million cases reported that year), and approximately 3% of the cases of Plasmodium falciparum malaria, the most acute and deadly form of the disease. However, more recently, there are encouraging signs of decreasing mortality from malaria in West Bengal; in 2007, the number of reported deaths from malaria was 100, down from 203 in 2006 (the total number of cases in 2007 was estimated at 86,132).

Having Malaria after being tested negative

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QUESTION:

In April 2010 I was in India, had symptoms of malaria, had blood work done, platelets low but rapid antigen and smear were negative. One year later, May 2011, had low platelet count, chills, no fever or fever spikes. Could this be malaria again even though I was tested negative.

ANSWER:

This response is courtesy of Dr Jaya Swarup Mohanty, a physician in India:

Malaria doesn’t affect the platelet count or the white blood cell count. The Plasmodium species causing malaria are either lodged in the hepatocytes (liver cells) or the RBCs (red blood cells) where they undergo asexual multiplication.
Any change in platelet count would rather indicate dengue (another mosquito borne disease with fever, chills, prostration, bone pain, low platelet count) or some blood disorders (where there would only be decrease or increase in platelet count). In this case there is only low platelet count and chills with no fever or fever spikes which may indicate some disorder in blood or immune system or as a reaction to some medication. It would be advisable to consult a physician as soon as possible for further work up.

Which doctor first linked Anopheles to cases of malaria?

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QUESTION:

Which doctor first found that Anopheles mosquitoes transmitted malaria?

ANSWER:

The first person to show conclusively that malaria could be transmitted by Anopheles mosquitoes was Ronald Ross (later knighted in 1911 for his services to medicine).

Working in the Presidency General Hospital in Calcutta (Sir Ronald was born in India and joined the Indian Medical Services in 1881 after studying medicine in London), he observed malaria parasites in the salivary glands of mosquitoes that had been fed on infected birds. This was in 1898, and he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Medicine and Physiology in 1902 based on this discovery. A medical board in 1900 later confirmed his findings, and provided recommendations for the control of malaria, some of which were instrumental in limiting the impact of the disease on workers employed to construct the Panama Canal.

The parasite that causes malaria, of the genus Plasmodium, had been identified in 1880 by the French doctor Charles Louis Alphonse Laveran, who had observed the parasites in the red blood cells of infected patients in Algeria.