World Malaria Day 2020
Malaria is a life-threatening disease caused by parasites called Plasmodium falciparum that is transmitted to people through the bites of infected female Anopheles mosquitoes. It is preventable and curable.
Image credit: Wikipedia. The image shows the Plasmodium falciparum, the parasite that causes malaria.
Image credit: CDC. The image shows an Anopheles mosquito, a vector that helps to transmit malaria.
Symptoms
Similar to another mosquito-borne disease, Dengue, people infected with malaria may experience high fever, headache, chills, muscle ache and tiredness. Nausea, vomiting, and diarrhoea may also occur.
When the infection gets more severe, it can cause anaemia and jaundice (yellow colouring of the skin and eye whites) due to the loss of red blood cells. If not promptly treated, the infection can become severe and may cause kidney failure, seizures, mental confusion, coma, and death.
Prevention and treatment
To effectively prevent malaria, vector control is the mainstay. Vector control aims to reduce the contact between the Anopheles mosquitoes and human and reduce the population of the mosquitoes. Two forms of vector control – insecticide-treated mosquito nets and indoor residual spraying – are effective in a wide range of circumstances.
Image credit: Eagle Online
Image credit: Wikimedia Commons
Antimalarial drugs can be used to treat and prevent malaria. For travellers, malaria can be prevented through chemoprophylaxis, which suppresses the blood stage of malaria infections, thereby preventing malaria disease. If you are travelling to locations where malaria is prevalent, talk to your doctor to get an antimalarial drug before your trip. It is very likely that your doctor will prescribe an antimalarial drug called chloroquine to you. Chloroquine was the first drug produced on a large scale for treatment and prevention of malaria infection. It has been successful for a while until the resistant strains emerged in the 1950s and 1960s.
Fun fact: Chloroquine is also being studied for its effectiveness in treating the SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. We wrote an article about it!
Today, chloroquine is only used as chemoprophylaxis for malaria. The current treatment of malaria is mainly the artemisinin-based combination therapies.
Image credit: DW
But haven’t we got rid of malaria already?
Malaysia has seen a huge reduction in malaria cases since the 90s. In 1990, there were 50,500 cases in Malaysia. A decade later, in the year 2000, the number of reported cases has reduced to 12,705 cases. In 2012, there were 4,725 cases which are a 63% reduction compared to 2000. The incidence rate in Malaysia has declined to less than 1 per 1,000 population since 1998.
However, the same trajectory is not seen in some part of the countries, particularly sub-Saharan Africa. According to the latest World Malaria Report, the sub-Saharan Africa region continues to carry a disproportionately high share of the global malaria burden. In 2018, the region was home to 93% of malaria cases and 94% of malaria deaths.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) has warned that the number of deaths caused by malaria in sub-Saharan Africa could double to 769,000, as efforts to tackle the disease face disruptions by the coronavirus pandemic.
In conjunction with World Malaria Day 2020, share this article with your friends and family. Together, we can raise more awareness for malaria!
References:
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Prevention CC for DC and. CDC - Malaria - FAQs. Accessed April 25, 2020. https://www.cdc.gov/malaria/about/faqs.html
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Fact sheet about malaria. Accessed April 25, 2020. https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/malaria
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World Health Organization. Guidelines for the treatment of malaria, 3rd ed, WHO, Geneva 2015. http://www.who.int/malaria/publications/atoz/9789241549127/en/
