Malaria

6 Pages 1486 Words

Malaria and Plasmodium

Malaria is one of the most prevalent and dangerous diseases known to man. It has existed for centuries and affects a myriad of people in the tropical region. Even today, with our newly discovered treatments for many of the tropical diseases, over 10% of the people that are infected with malaria each year and do not receive proper treatment die from infection. In Africa alone, over 1 million children die each year because of malaria and new cases are reported frequently. The purpose of this paper is to introduce the history of malaria, discuss the life cycle, and introduce methods of treatment and prevention. Overall, the research done on malaria proves that it is a very devastating sickness and can be extremely harmful to man.
From the beginning, the protozoan that causes malaria has haunted us. Fossils of mosquitoes that are 30 million years old contain the vector for malaria. After centuries of written history, many civilizations have come to find out about the debilitating sickness. The Greek physician Hippocrates described the symptoms of malaria in the 5th Century BC (). The name malaria is actually derived from the Italian words, mal and aria, meaning "bad air." This is significant because people of earlier times believed that the disease was caused by polluted air near swamps and wetlands in Europe. Though most people knew of the sickness, the scientific identification of malaria was not founded until 1880 (Melvyn 1993). The French army physician, Charles Laveran, while stationed in Algeria, noticed strange shapes of red blood cells in certain patients. Laveran identified the disease scientifically and linked it to a certain protozoan. Although the disease had been identified, it was not until 1897, when British army physician, Ronald Ross studied birds and discovered that the malarial protozoan was transmitted through mosquitoes. Soon thereafter, two Italian scientists noted that mosquito...