What is Malaria?
Malaria is a mosquito-borne infectious disease caused by
various species of the parasitic protozoan microorganisms
called Plasmodium. Malaria is a disease that man has
battled with for a long time. The first evidence of this
protozoan came from mosquitoes preserved in amber
nearly 30 million years ago.
It is even thought to have brought the Roman Empire to its
knees. Malaria was so prevalent during the Roman times
that the disease is also called ‘Roman Fever’. Today, the
credit for actually discovering the parasite is given to
Charles Louis Alphonse Laveran, a French physician. He
even won the Nobel Prize in 1907 for his findings.
Causes of Malaria
There are many factors that can cause malaria, such as –
Bitten by a malarial vector (Anopheles stephensi)
Use of shared and infected syringes.
Organ transplantation.
Transfusion.
From an infected mother to her baby during birth.
Symptoms of malaria
Symptoms of malaria are exhibited within 7 to 18 days of
being infected. Common symptoms include:
Fever, fatigue, chills, vomiting, and headaches
Diarrhoea, anaemia and muscle pain
Profuse sweating and convulsions
Bloody stools.
In severe cases, malaria can be devastating; it can lead to
seizures, coma and eventually, death.
Sir Ronald Ross and his study on the transmission of the
disease helped carve the way for future scientists to
effectively combat the disease.
Malaria Life Cycle Diagram
Below is a label-led diagram of the malarial parasite to give
you a better insight of their life cycle.
Malaria parasite exists in the form of a motile sporozoite.
The vector of malaria i.e. the female Anopheles mosquito
transmits the malarial sporozoites into the hosts. When an
infected mosquito bites a human, the sporozoites are
injected into the blood through the mosquito’s saliva.
The sporozoites travel into our body and accumulate in the
liver. These parasites initially multiply within the liver, by
damaging the liver and rupturing the blood cells in the body.
Malaria kills by causing the destruction of the red blood
cells in the host. The parasites reproduce asexually in the
RBCs, bursting the cells and releasing more parasites to
infect more cells. The rupture of red blood cells by the
malaria parasite releases a toxin called hemozoin which
causes the patient to experience a condition known as the
chills.
When the female Anopheles mosquito bites an infected
human, the parasites enter the mosquito’s body along the
human blood it is drinking. It is inside the mosquito’s body
that the actual development and maturing of the parasite
happens. The parasites produced in the human body
reach the intestine of the mosquito where the male and
females cells fertilize each other to lead to the formation of
a sporozoite. On maturing, the sporozoite breaks out the
mosquito’s intestine and migrate to the salivary glands.
Once they reach salivary glands, they wait till the mosquito
bites another human and the process of infection and
disease begins all over again. It is prudent however to
observe that the complete development of the malaria
parasite takes place in two different hosts; humans and
mosquitoes.
Prevention of malaria
Malaria is one of the major causes of preventable death in
the world today. It affects more than 500 million people
worldwide and causes 1 to 2 million deaths every year. It is
a tropical infectious disease and almost 90 per cent of the
cases are from Sub-Saharan Africa.
There are two ways to deal with malaria – prevent the
mosquito bite from happening (i.e. preventative steps) or
attack the parasites once they have infected the body.
The first method advocates the use of mosquito nets and
mosquito repellents such as permethrin to prevent
mosquitoes from biting. The second form of treatment uses
a chemical called Quinine present in the bark of a cinchona
tree. A form of drug chloroquine has proven very effective
against malaria even though it is not a vaccine.
