How can we get information about malaria spreads?
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Malaria is infection with any of 4 species of Plasmodium. Symptoms are fever, which may be periodic, chills, sweating, hemolytic anemia, and splenomegaly. Diagnosis is by seeing Plasmodium in a peripheral blood smear. Treatment and prophylaxis depend on the species and drug sensitivity and include chloroquine, quinine, atovaquone and proguanil, mefloquine, doxycycline, and artemisinin derivatives. Patients infected with P. vivax and P. ovale also receive primaquine.
Please see the web pages for more details on Malaria.
Why Have We Failed To Control Malaria (and Dengue and Chikungunya)?
Malaria has caused immense suffering to mankind since millennia, killing millions, commoners and kings alike. Having evolved with the human species, the human malaria parasites have stoutly resisted all attempts at wiping them out and have remerged with vengeance, negating some achievements made during the Global Malaria Control Programme of 1950s. Today, malaria causes an estimated 500 million cases a year, kills 2000 African children every day, (that is one African child dying every 30 seconds) and costs an estimated $12 billion a year in lost gross domestic product.
Why is malaria proving such a hard problem? Reasons are many.
The malaria parasite exists in two living beings - man, the host who suffers and the female anopheles mosquito, the vector that spreads the disease. Controlling malaria would therefore involve three living beings - the parasite itself, man and mosquito. And two of these, man and mosquito- are moving, spreading malaria from person to person, place to place, even across continents in this jet age.
Malaria parasite has the great ability to escape human defenses - the immune system and can survive within the host for years without harming him, but spreading through the mosquito. Compare this with the HIV that causes AIDS and Mycobacterium tuberculosis, the bacteria causing Tuberculosis or TB. These organisms too have a similar ability and no wonder then that these three infectious diseases are now posing the greatest threat to human health and survival. And this is one reason why a vaccine against malaria may not be as effective, say as the ones against polio, small pox etc, diseases that have no vectors and induce strong immune response.
The parasite is controlled with antimalaria drugs. But the first line drug chloroquine, that is cheap and safe, is no more effective in many parts of the world as P. falciparum has developed resistance to it. Newer drugs are very few, expensive (and out of reach to most populations) and more toxic.
The host is always moving from place to place, for work or leisure. It is these carriers that spread malaria from one place to another and to people around them. It is an onerous task to track these immigrant workers and treat them. In Mangalooru, the coastal city in southern India where I work, for example, boom in constructions and infrastructure building has brought in thousands of workers from all parts of the country, and many of these are from malarious areas. Their living conditions are pathetic if any, without even a roof over their bodies, leave alone mosquito nets. Their exposed bodies are fertile for the female anopheles to bite. And their workplace often encourages mosquito breeding-stagnant water in tanks, puddles, on the concrete surface for curing etc. So we have the hosts with parasite within and plenty of vectors in one place and malaria spreads to neighbouring areas and thence to the city as a whole. Efforts to track and treat the carrier workers has been found to be the most difficult job: They keep changing their work places, those suffering disappear (most have no addresses and some return home) and many arrive each day by buses and trains and it is difficult to screen all of them.
Mosquitoes are ubiquitous and more adapted than humans are, being on this planet at least 40 times as long as humans. Breeding profusely in stagnant water, made available in plenty around human habitations, the mosquitoes are difficult to control once they develop wings and start flying. And to add to the woes, even mosquitoes have developed resistance against insecticides.
Is it hopeless then? Parasites are resistant, mosquitoes are tiny, flying and defy insecticides and man is moving and difficult to track and mend. Hope, if at all, lies in the non-flying mosquito larvae. The great Sir Ronald Ross showed it way back in 1900. But we don't learn simple lessons, or DO NOT want to! Just reduce the man made sources of mosquito breeding and that's it! But then what is the problem? No mosquitoes - no insecticides; no malaria - no vaccines, no anti malaria drugs!
Try these websites:
Hope this helps : p
http://www.zephyrus.co.uk/malaria.html...
http://health2k.state.nv.us/disease/dise...
http://www.medindia.net/articles/mosquit...
http://www.malariasite.com/malaria/trans...
The female anopheles mosquito is the vector for human malaria.
Vector means Any agent (person or animal or microorganism) that carries and transmits a disease.
in govt. hospitals, but ur information 1). don't allow dirtywater nr by ur residence, 2). use boiled water 3).use mosquito net.4)clean ur home with dettol
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