Diseases on the Move: Malaria
Saturday, September 6th, 2008Yesterday, I started a series of posts on tropical diseases that are spreading into areas that until recently had not been present or at least not typically present, like North America and Europe. In short, tropical zones are spreading into previously temperate areas and bringing tropical diseases with them.
Malaria kills over one million people a year, mostly in tropical areas like Sub-Saharan and Equatorial Africa. However, according to the Centers for Disease Control, 300 to 500 million people suffer from malaria every year. Symptoms include fever, chills, headaches, vomiting, and sometimes seizures in young children. The earlier that malaria is diagnosed and treated, the better the chances for a full recovery. But as malaria is not seen in such places like Michigan and New Jersey, the symptoms are often mis-diagnosed, meaning that the disease will not be treated properly and the chances of more severe consequences increase. When malaria is left untreated, victims can experience kidney failure, cardiovascular collapse, and slip into a coma. People that don’t live in malaria-prone areas are at higher risk as they have no immunity to the disease. Pregnant woman, children, and anyone with a compromised immune system are also at increased risk of more severe cases of malaria.
Malaria is spread by Plasmodium (Plasmodium falciparum or Plasmodium vivax) parasite carried by the Anopheles mosquito from human host to human host.
This is what is looks like when the parasite starts attacking your red blood cells.
Malaria can be treated with several drugs, and treatment should start within 24 hours of the appearance of the first symptoms. So you can see why proper diagnosis is so important. However, scientists are finding that plasmodium parasites are becoming resistant to many of the older drugs currently on the market mostly in poorer countries and areas of the world afflicted by malaria. Malaria prevention by way of mosquito control is touted as the best way to combat the disease, but now that the range for the anopheles mosquito is spreading, this is becoming increasingly difficult.
Here is a map that shows the classic range of malaria.
But as the world warms, and winters become milder, warmer, and wetter, the necessary cold temperatures that kill off the mosquito populations in temperate areas are not quite effective and becoming less so in the fight to keep malaria at bay in temperate North America and Europe. Malaria had been endemic to North America, but stringent preventive measures have effectively wiped out the disease in the US. But with the looming danger of global warming trends, malaria may be posed to once again be endemic in the US.
By the way, quinine is one of the oldest medicines for treating malaria. Quinine comes from the bark of the cinchona tree, native to South America. Quinine was first made into a powder by the French for ingestion, but really hit its mark when the British mixed it with soda water (and gin, of course). You could say that quinine is what made colonization of certain parts of the world possible, as Africa was once called the “white man’s grave.”
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