Malaria is a severe, oftentimes fatal disease that is caused by a parasite but transmitted by mosquitoes. It affects nearly 300 million individuals each year and kills approximately 400,000. To reduce your risk of contracting the virus, and to do your part to minimize the spread, it is important to learn everything you can about the malaria. Below are the top 10 need to know facts about malaria.
Malaria is a major public health concern, with as many as 91 countries currently experiencing an ongoing transmission problem. Nearly half the world’s population is currently at risk of contracting malaria, with as many as 216 million new cases reported in 2016 alone. Of those hundreds of millions of cases, approximately 450,000 people died of the disease, many of them children.
Though effort to control malaria have been ongoing for decades. Progress in recent years has been slipping. In fact, as of 2017.global health organizations reported that the number of cases has been increasing. According to UNICEF.one child dies of the disease every two minutes.
Data supports this assertion. According to the numbers, the mortality rate for malaria fell by 60% between 2000 and 2015. The total number of cases fell by 37% globally in that same period. However, by 2016. 91 countries reported a combined total of 2016 new malaria cases, which is 5 million-case increase from 2015. An astounding 15 millions of that 5 million were recorded in Nigeria and Rwanda.
To reverse these alarming trends. UNICEF and WHO are working closely to rid the world of malaria and ensuring that the most vulnerable of the populations receive the interventions and preventative measures necessary to stay healthy.
Of all infectious diseases, malaria is the third leading cause of death among children between the ages of one month and five years of age. It comes in right after pneumonia and diarrhea.
Because mosquitoes thrive in tropical and subtropical environments, Africa and parts of Southeast Asia are prime breeding grounds for the mosquitoes that eventually carry the virus. As a result, countries that are near the equator — including Africa and Southeast Asia — are more at risk of contracting the disease than countries further away. Moreover, these regions are typically poverty-stricken, meaning residents often do not have the medications, care or treatments necessary to prevent or manage malaria. Sadly, approximately 90% of all annual malaria deaths occur in sub-Africa.
Unlike, say, yellow fever, which requires mosquitoes to pass on a virus, humans can pass malaria to one another. While you cannot “catch” malaria like you can a cold, you can pass on the virus or contract it via a blood transfusion, through the sharing of needles or during pregnancy.
Malaria symptoms range from extremely mild to severe and life threatening. As is the case with many viruses and diseases, malaria tends to prey on more vulnerable populations, attacking children under the age of five, malnourished individuals, and pregnant women and their unborn children. Sadly, malaria is a major contributor of deaths of young children and expectant mothers worldwide.
Most forms of malaria can lay dormant anywhere from one month to one year after transmission. For this reason, almost all antimalarial medications recommend that individuals continue to take their daily or weekly dose anywhere from a couple of days to four weeks after their return home.
That said, even despite the use of antiviral medications, individuals may contract the virus and not show symptoms for weeks to a year later. For rarer forms of malaria, the latency period can be as long as four years.
For many healthy adults, symptoms of malaria resemble that of a typical cold or flu virus. They may include fever, chills, body aches, headache, nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, cough, abdominal pain and fatigue. In more severe cases, individuals may develop rapid breathing and rapid heartrate.
Though symptoms may start out mild, they can grow progressively worse, and quickly. Individuals with compromised immune systems, young children and pregnant women may be at risk of developing life-threatening complications. Such complications may include cerebral malaria (characterized by seizures and coma), anaemia, low blood sugar and organ failure. Each of these complications can lead to death.
Some people develop malaria “attacks,” in which their body cycles through the milder symptoms, returns to normal, and then undergoes a spike in symptoms again.
Researchers have developed cures for the older and more common strains of malaria, which proved effective in killing off the parasite that causes the illness. Unfortunately, as with many adaptable diseases, the malaria parasite continues to adapt to become more drug resistant. While the earlier strains respond well to antimalarial medications, newer strains continue to threaten the lives of millions.
Though not currently on the market, a potential vaccine for malaria is currently being developed and tested. Developed by researchers at the University of Oxford, the promising vaccine comes with an astounding 80% efficacy rate, which could be “world changing,” as the media put it. If the vaccine is approved and released to the market, it could go a long way toward global goals of eradicating malaria once and for all.