Malaria - The Disease

Malaria is a potentially life threatening disease caused by a microscopic parasite called Plasmodium.

• Clinical attacks of malaria normally begin with influenza-like symptoms, fever often accompanied by a headache, muscle stiffness and shaking, some-times also vomiting and diarrhoea.
• Recurrent bouts of fever and sweating may then develop.
• Human malaria is the most devastating and widespread parasitic disease.
• Malaria exists in more than 100 countries, and affects more than 40% of the world population, mainly the most resource constraint populations in tropical Africa.
• More than 90% of all malaria cases occur in tropical Africa, and the vast ma-jority of deaths caused by malaria occur in African children under five years of age.
• It is estimated that in areas of Africa with high malaria transmission, a child will die every 30 seconds. In certain areas of Africa almost 3,000 children die from malaria every day.
• Malaria is transmitted from human to human by infective bites of the female Anopheles mosquito. Preventing mosquito bites, may therefore prevent ma-laria.
• Malaria infection can be drug cured. However, mosquitoes are becoming in-creasingly resistant to chemical insecticides and there is an ever increasing and widening spread of malaria parasites resistant to available to antimalaria drugs.
• The most resource constraint part of the world experiences more malaria to-day than 30 years ago. This public health crisis affects the most vulnerable segments of society, children and pregnant women.
• As with other transmittable diseases, vaccination may offer a sustainable so-lution to the control of malaria.
• Vaccines are at the centre of public health, and are a health-promoting in-tervention, especially benefiting the poor.