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Home / Malaria Overview / Malaria Prevention and Control

Malaria Prevention and Control

February 14, 2011 By Malaria.com 6 Comments

Malaria Prevention

Prevention of malaria can aim at either:

  • preventing infection, by avoiding bites by parasite-carrying mosquitoes, or
  • preventing disease, by using antimalarial drugs prophylactically. The drugs do not prevent initial infection through a mosquito bite, but they prevent the development of malaria parasites in the blood, which are the forms that cause disease. This type of prevention is also called “suppression.”

Malaria Prevention and Control in Endemic Areas

Prevention is an important component of malaria control in endemic countries. It is achieved through:

  • vector control
  • personal protection measures such as insecticide-treated bed nets
  • preventive treatment with antimalarial drugs of vulnerable groups such as pregnant women, who receive intermittent preventive treatment.
    • Case management diagnosis and treatment of patients suffering from malaria
    • Prevention of infection through vector control
    • Prevention of disease by administration of antimalarial drugs to particularly vulnerable population groups such as pregnant women and infants.
    • National authorities (especially the Ministry of Health)
    • International organizations (such as the World Health Organization and UNICEF)
    • Governmental and nongovernmental agencies
    • The private sector
    • The communities.
    • Health education (also called Information-Education-Communication, IEC), where the communities are informed of what they can do to prevent and treat malaria.
    • Training and supervision of health workers, to ensure that they carry out their tasks correctly.
    • Provision of equipment and supplies (e.g., microscopes, drugs, bed nets) to allow the health workers and the communities to carry out the interventions.
    • Drug-resistant malaria parasites hinder case management by decreasing the efficacy of antimalarial drugs and by requiring the use of alternate drugs that are often more costly, less safe and less easy to administer.
    • Insecticide resistance decreases the efficacy of interventions that rely on insecticides such as insecticide-treated bed nets and insecticide spraying.
    • Inadequate health infrastructures in poor countries are unable to conduct the recommended interventions.
    • The people most exposed to malaria are often poor and lack education. They often do not know how to prevent or treat malaria. Even when they do know, they often do not have the financial means to purchase the necessary products, such as drugs or bed nets.
  • The goal of malaria control in malaria-endemic countries is to reduce as much as possible the health impact of malaria on a population, using the resources available, and taking into account other health priorities.

    Malaria control does not aim to eliminate malaria totally. Complete elimination of the malaria parasite (and thus the disease) would constitute eradication. While eradication is more desirable, it is not currently a realistic goal for most of the countries where malaria is endemic.

    Malaria control is carried out through the following interventions, which are often combined:

    Malaria Case Management

    Persons who are sick with malaria should be treated promptly and correctly. Malaria is often a debilitating disease that, when caused by Plasmodium falciparum, can be fatal. In addition, treatment eliminates an essential component of the cycle (the parasite) and thus interrupts the transmission cycle.

    The World Health Organization recommends that anyone suspected of having malaria should receive diagnosis and treatment with an effective drug within 24 hours of the onset of symptoms. When the patient cannot have access to a health care provider within that time period (as is the case for most patients in malaria-endemic areas), home treatment is acceptable.

    Prevention of Malaria Infection

    Infection is prevented when malaria-carrying Anopheles mosquitoes are prevented from biting humans.

    Vector control aims to reduce contacts between mosquitoes and humans. Some vector control measures (destruction of larval breeding sites, insecticide spraying inside houses) require organized teams (for example, from the Ministry of Health) and resources that are not always available.

    An alternate approach, insecticide-treated bed nets (ITNs), combines vector control and personal protection. This intervention can often be conducted by the communities themselves and has become a major intervention in malaria control.

    Prevention of Malaria Disease

    Administration of antimalarial drugs to vulnerable population groups does not prevent infection, which happens through mosquito bites. But drugs can prevent disease by eliminating the parasites that are in the blood, which are the forms that cause disease. Pregnant women are the vulnerable group most frequently targeted. They may receive, for example, “intermittent preventive treatment” (IPT) with antimalarial drugs given most often at antenatal consultations during the second and third trimesters of pregnancy.

    Source: Centers for Disease Control (CDC)

Filed Under: Malaria Overview Tagged With: Antimalarial Drugs, Malaria Control, Malaria Prevention

Comments

  1. ABDINOOR says

    April 25, 2012 at 2:20 am

    I am lab technecian especialy anti-malaria my question is reagent strips for diagnosis malaria actually I don’t have full confidence about that. me, I believe microscopically especialy giemsa stain so I want some information about that. thank you.

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    • Claire Standley, Editor says

      April 30, 2012 at 5:00 pm

      Certainly it is important to test reagent strips well so their sensitivity and specificity for different types of malaria is well known before they are rolled out in the field; furthermore, there will always still be a role for blood films for identifying gametocytes and other life stages of the parasite, which cannot be directly tested for with rapid diagnostic tests (RDTs). However, so far, many RDTs have been shown to be more sensitive than microscopy, especially for detecting low intensity infections. This website from WHO (http://www2.wpro.who.int/sites/rdt) provides a lot more information about the different RDTs available, and their diagnostic qualities.

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  2. Jeanette says

    September 22, 2012 at 5:56 pm

    I recently moved to the Congo and have been taking Doxycyclin the whole time. Unfortunately I have not had a mosquito net and have been bitten nearly every night in spite of my efforts to keep the bedroom mosquito free. So my chances of getting Malaria are pretty high.
    Can you tell me what the symptoms are likely to be for someone taking the prophylaxis, and whether it will develop fully, or recur if I do get it?
    Most of my friends have stopped taking the prophylaxis, but I am just a mosquito magnet so decided to keep taking it and am wondering what the benefit of taking it is?
    Thanks and what a great website!

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    • Judith Standley says

      October 11, 2012 at 3:59 am

      Hi Jeanette,

      Firstly, you should get a long acting insecticide treated bednet to prevent all those bites!! But to answer your question, if you get malaria the symptoms will be the same. However doxycycline is pretty effective. Randomized placebo controlled trials have shown it is between 92-96% effective in preventing P. falciparum malaria, which is very good (and a huge benefit to answer your question!), but obviously not 100% perfect. So even when taken perfectly, some infections do occur. In addition, there is some data which suggests that dairy products, taken together with doxycycline, may limit the uptake of the drug. This is rarely communicated to patients, who are instead contrarily told sometimes that taking the pills together with dairy products can reduce side effects! So avoid dairy products for 2-3 hours around the time you take doxycycline.

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  3. Anonymous says

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  4. http://tinyurl.com/livilynch53796 says

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    Log in to Reply

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