Malaria

 

 

 

 

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The Cinchona Plant contains QUININE

If someone develops a fever without an obvious cause within a few weeks of returning from a malarial area then it must be assumed that they have Malaria until tests conclusively prove it not to be. The only way of diagnosing Malaria is by looking at a blood sample under a microscope to see the parasites in the red blood cells. There is no other way of being certain if a person has Malaria or another fever.

To treat Malaria there are a number of anti-malaria drugs. The oldest and best known is Quinine, though all of the drugs used to prevent malaria can also be used as treatment but in much higher dose.

When a Mozzy bites a human, it injects a small amount of its salive into the bite, this contains an anti-coagulant so that the Mozzy can suck your blood without it clotting. If the Mozzy is infected, it has the immature malaria parasite in its salivary gland, so parasites get injected into the victim along with the anti-coagulant. If the Mozzy is not infected but it happens to bite a human with Malaria then it will get the parasite in the persons blood so the mozzy will become infected.

When the person is bitten only a small number of immature parasites get injected into them so there are no symptoms at first. Apart from an itchy bite. The parasites circulate in the blood and get taken up by cells in the liver. In the liver cells they multiply to huge numbers. Eventually the affected liver cells burst releasing the parasites into the bloodstream in vast numbers. Once in the blood, the now mature parasites penetrate red blood cells. Inside the red cells the parasites further multiply until the red cells burst releasing more parasites into the blood, these infect more red cells and so the processs repeats building up huge numbers of parasites which get released into the blood in increasing "waves". With each wave of parasites released into the blood, symptoms of Malaria develop. This produces the relapsing / remitting fever typical of Malaria. It takes between two weeks and three months for enough parasites to build up to cause symptoms

A Mozzy doing its stuff !

The characteristic symptoms of malaria are bouts of high fever with uncontrollable shivering (rigors) and associated malaise, weakness etc. Each bout of fever coincides with a wave of red cells bursting releasing millions of parasites into the bloodstream. As well as the symptoms of fever, severe headache, diarrhoea and vomiting are usual. Each bout of fever lasts several hours. The time between bouts of fever depends on the type of malaria, this varies from under 24 hours to 4-5 days.

As large numbers of red blood cells are bursting over time the victim becomes anaemic and can develop kidney failure from the amount of haemoglobin from the burst cells clogging up the kidneys. The loss of lots of liver cells can cause jaundice or liver failure. In one of the common forms of Malaria known as Cerebral Malaria, millions of parasites and burst cells clog up blood vessels in the brain. This is very serious and is frequently fatal or results in lasting brain damage.

What is Malaria ?

Malaria s a serious illness caused by a microscopic parasite in the bloodstream. There are four different parasites that cause four slightly different forms of malaria. The commonest and most serious is caused by the parasite "Plasmodium Falciparum" . The Malaria parasite has a complicated life cycle, it lives for part of its life inside the salivary glands of a mosquito and the other part of its life in a human.

There are over two thousand cases of Malaria per year in the UK. These are all in people who have been bitten whilst abroad but have not yet developed symptoms on their return to the UK