Malaria

What do you call a mosquito thats bicycling.
An itch-biker.

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Malaria

Parasite Life Cycle Animation in Human

Affected Areas

Affected Areas

Interview

Sunny intervewed his uncle. His uncle's name is Subodh Shah. He is in his late 40's. He had malaria. He lives in Bombay, India and his farm is about 50 miles east of Bombay. This is the info. that he gave Sunny.

1.He had it 2 years ago after monsoon season (in August).

2.He had the mild malaria and had for 15 days.

3.He was cold, shivering, weak and he had 102 fever for 7 days.

4.He got a mosquito bite on his farm.

5.He had to sit in ice cold water to lower his fever.

6. He had a body-ache and head-ache, he was vomiting.

7 His medicne was called Cloroquine.

Recent Outbreak of Malaria in India

In April-May 2006, at least 200 people in the Indian state of Assam have lost their lives to malaria. Most of the deaths were caused by Plasmodium falciparum, the most dangerous of the four malaria parasites. Every year, over 2 million Indians suffer from malaria, leading to about 1000 malaria deaths each year.

It's a silent killer. It strikes without warning! The suspect and culprit are obvious. It's Malaria!

Malaria is caused by a parasite called plasmodium.

It comes in 4 types. Falciparum (which is the most dangerous), vivax, ovale and malariae.

Malaria is transmitted from human to human by an infected female Anopheles mosquito.

Picture drawn by Tiffany
Color and technique by Tejas

Writing by Victoria
Reference: Please see credits

Prevention

Top of Page

For Plasmodium Falciparum parasite it is often fatal and quick treatment is necessary, replacing lost fluids or treating the anemia with blood transfusion.

There are many different treatments for the parasites. All involve killing the parasite in the liver or blood. The most common are Quinine, Chloroquine and Mefloquine.

Unfortunately the plasmodium is developing resistance to these drugs and newer drugs are being used.

As of yet scientists have not been able to produce a vaccine but many are working on this.

Prevention

The symptoms vary from parasite to parasite. Symptoms are usually apparent within 10-15 days although sometimes much longer. The main sign is flu- like illness with cycles of fever and chills.

Each different type of plasmodium has different fever, chill sweating cycles. These are caused by the red blood cells bursting and plasmodium entering the blood stream. If enough red blood cells burst it causes anemia and jaundice.

If you are infected with Plasmodium Falciparum, you would experience severe hemolytic anemia, kidney failure, coma and death.

Symptoms

90% of malaria cases are found in Sub Saharan Africa but it also affects India, Brazil, Afghanistan, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Indonesia, Vietnam, Cambodia, and Latin America. It affects 40% of the world's population. That's a lot of people!

It's a deadly parasite. Between one and three million people die from Malaria each year and it infects about 200 million people.

When an infected mosquito bites you, she injects tiny malaria eggs called sporozoites. These head straight to a liver cell where they grow and become mature cells called merozoites.
The merozoites rush into the blood stream when the liver cell ruptures and infect your red blood cells. The merozoites again grow until the blood cells burst open releasing the mature plasmodium.
Some of these mature plasmodium turn into male and female gametocytes or egg cells.
When a mosquito siphons off some blood containing egg cells, they join together creating a zygote (or plasmodium baby). They swim to the salivary gland of the mosquito and wait patiently until they are injected iinto the next person.

Malaria Parasite Life Cycle