Welcome to You Ask Andy

Denton Carter, age 15, of Greenville, Miss., for his question:

HAS MALARIA BEEN ELIMINATED?

Fortunately, the serious infectious disease called malaria has been all but wiped out in the United States and Canada. But the disease has definitely not been eliminated around the world, and in many places it is still considered a killer. Also, American travelers can still catch it in some foreign lands.

Malaria now kills more than 1 million people each year. The disease ranks as the chief cause of death in lots of the tropical areas of the world.

The diseases name comes from two Italian words meaning "bad sir." Malaria received its name because it was associated with the bad smelling, musty air that is found in swamps.

Malaria is caused by a genus called Plasodium, which are one celled animals called protozoa. Plasodium is a parasite.

Plasodiums spend their lives in the red blood cells of human beings and in the female Anopheles mosquitoes. These are the mosquitoes that carry and spread the malaria parasites.

When the mosquito bites a person with malaria, it sucks up the blood cells that contain the parasites. The parasites then develop and multiply in the mosquitos stomach. When the mosquito bites another person, saliva containing the malaria parasites is injected into the victim. The parasites grow in the victim, burst blood cells and cause anemia and malaria.

Malaria is controlled and prevented by destroying the Anopheles mosquitoes and their breeding places. Often this isn't an easy job. First swamps moat be drained or sprayed with an oil or chemicals that will destroy the mosquitoes' larvae.

Major draining operations cant be done in many parts of the world. But effective methods of killing and controlling the infected mosquitoes have been developed. Insecticides work well in this regard. Since many of the mosquitoes attack only at night, window screens also are weapons in the war.

Malaria 1s treated with drugs that destroy the parasites.

Quinine was used by doctors for centuries to prevent sad treat malaria. During World War II, however, quinine wasn•t available because sources in the East Indies were cut off. At that time, scientists came up with new compounds that were actually more effective than quinine.

Among the products currently used are Atabrine and chloroquina. Some doctors now also use quinine.

A French scientist named Charles Laveran in 1880 discovered the protozoa that caused malaria. Then an English scientist named Ronald Ross in 1889 found that certain mosquitoes can infect birds with malaria. And not long after this an Italian medical man named Giovanni Grassi figured out the life cycle of the human malaria parasite.

The Culex mosquito carries the parasites that infect birds. Malaria parasites also can infect lizards and monkeys. Scientists have studied these animals as a way of learning more about human malaria.

 

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