QUESTION: Why is there not a prevalence of malaria in the southern United States when we are bitten almost daily by the "little beasts?" ANSWER: Malaria once was relatively common in the southern United States. Transmission used to be possible due to the favorable climatic conditions for the development both of the mosquito as well as the malaria parasite. Huge advances in the control and … [Read more...]
Does malaria spread from a person to another?
QUESTION: Can malaria spread from one person to another? ANSWER: Usually, no. In most cases, the malaria parasite has to first pass from a human host into a mosquito as the mosquito takes a blood meal, and then from the mosquito into another human via the mosquito's saliva. This severely limits the amount of person-to-person transmission that exists. In fact, the only mechanisms for … [Read more...]
What is malaria?
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 … [Read more...]
Treatment for Malaria
QUESTION: How do you treat malaria? ANSWER: Malaria can be treated with a number of different types of medication; which one to use depends on the type of malaria you have, as well as whether resistant strains are known to occur in your area. Below I have copied the response I wrote to a similar question on malaria treatment, posted on the 2nd of May, 2011: In most cases of … [Read more...]
Malaria Statistics
QUESTION: What are the statistics of malaria? ANSWER: If you mean the number of cases worldwide and the number of deaths, then the statistics are as follows: the World Health Organization estimates that approximately half the world's population are at risk from malaria infection, and as a result, there are somewhere between 300 and 500 million cases of malaria every year, … [Read more...]
Which doctor first linked Anopheles to cases of malaria?
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 … [Read more...]
Started Late on Anti-malaria Medication
QUESTION: I'm in a malarious country and I had no idea about anti-malarials until I got here, so I started taking anti-malaria(doxycicline) two weeks late. It has been three weeks since I started taking the medicine. Do you think it would work or should I stop taking it? ANSWER: It depends a bit on where you are, and what types of malaria are in your region. Plasmodium falciparum usually … [Read more...]
Introduction of malaria
QUESTION: What is the introduction of malaria? ANSWER: Malaria is introduced into the human host via mosquitoes, who pass the parasite into the human blood stream through their mouthparts as they take a blood meal. Since the development of both the mosquito and the parasite are temperature-dependent, and tend to favour warm, humid conditions (mosquito larvae require pools of still water … [Read more...]
How does malaria spread?
QUESTION: How does malaria spread? ANSWER: Malaria is a vector-borne disease; this means that it has to be spread through a "vector" species, which in this case are female mosquitoes of the genus Anopheles. The female mosquito needs to feed on blood in order to produce eggs; most species lay eggs every 2-3 days, which means each female mosquito needs to take very regular blood … [Read more...]
What is malaria? What Causes Malaria?
QUESTIONS: What is malaria? What causes malaria? ANSWER: I have copied below the text from an earlier question, also asking about the causes of malaria and explaining what it is: Malaria is a disease caused by a parasitic single-celled animal known as Plasmodium. There are different species of Plasmodium, which cause different kinds of malaria. The main types which infect humans … [Read more...]