Mackenzie Perkins
Malaria
People have lived with Malaria for a long time before the discovery of where it came from and how it was spread was known. Malaria is a fever plague known sometimes as Roman fever and death fever. Malaria probably came to Europe from Africa through the Nile Valley, and was brought to the new world by explorers, conquistadors, colonists and American slaves. People used to call malaria “evil air” which derived from the miasma theory of causation. Malaria seemed to become widespread after the introduction of agriculture, which increased human population density and provided more breeding places for the Anopheles mosquitos (the brown, spotted-winged, female mosquito that carried the infected blood). A huge milestone in the history of medicine was when Dr. Manson came up with the theory that mosquitos transmit malaria. Ross studied this theory and decided that drinking water with dead mosquitos was not how malaria was spread but that humans got malaria after being bit. Another interesting fact is that malaria can be controlled not only by drugs but also through the development of immunity (acquired immunity). There is also a genetic resistance to malaria called sickle cell trait that causes one to produce slightly different hemoglobin. This natural immunity inherited by parents, allows a child to develop acquired immunity to falciparum malaria (which usually kills children), and then reproduce.
There is no malaria vaccine yet but when/if there is one, for it to be fully protective it would have to produce a very strong immune response. To illuminate malaria in parts of Africa where malaria is an endemic, R-naught = 50 to 100, it would need a 99% coverage using a lifelong vaccine and given at 3 months of age.
Today Malaria is devastating Africa, especially in areas of rainy and low-lying agricultural areas, and in other areas where there is famine. Malnourishment increases susceptibility to malaria and vulnerability to a range of other diseases, which leads to a loss of productivity, further draining the already unstable health care system.