Alcohol Abuse Advice

Prevention of Malaria

Malaria

Malaria is an infectious disease caused by a parasite that’s transmitted by mosquitoes. The illness results in recurrent attacks of chills and fever, and it can be deadly.

Estimate your risk of being exposed to malaria. You can find out from the Destinations section of this website if there is risk of malaria in the countries you will be visiting, what regions are most infected, and what type of malaria is most common.

How To Prevent Malaria

preventing disease, by using antimalarial drugs prophylactically. The drugs do not prevent initial infection through a mosquito bite, but they prevent the development of malaria parasites in the blood.

This factsheet is for people who are travelling to, or are going to live in, a country with malaria and want to know how to protect themselves against malaria.

Malaria is an infection. It’s caused by a parasite called Plasmodium which is carried by a certain type of mosquito and is passed through bites.

Seek immediate medical treatment if symptoms of malaria occur. Always consider malaria if you develop a fever after being in a malarious area.

Causes and Symptoms of Malaria

Malaria is mainly caused by parasitic protozoa, which spends most of its life in the red blood cells of humans. Malaria is spread by the female Anopheles mosquito, which transmit the parasites by first ingesting them from an infected person’s blood and then injecting the parasite in to an healthy person.

Plasmodium falciparum – this is the only parasite that causes malignant malaria. It causes the most severe symptoms and results in the most fatalities.

If you are bitten by a mosquito carrying the P. vivax, P. ovale or P. malariae parasite, symptoms can appear a year or more after being bitten. This is because the parasite can lay dormant in your liver and become active months later. These parasites may also cause you to have repeat symptoms.

Malaria cannot be casually transmitted directly from one person to another. Instead, a mosquito bites an infected person and then passes the infection on to the next human it bites.

Treatments Of Malaria

Doctors recommend that treatment should be started within 24 hours after you see the first symptom of malaria. Treatment of patients with a simple type of malaria can be conducted at their own homes, but patients with severe type of malaria should be hospitalized as soon as possible.

Malaria has been with us long enough to have changed our genes. The reason why many people of African descent suffer from the blood disease sickle cell anemia is because the gene that causes it also confers some immunity to malaria.

Treatments of Malaria

void going outside between dusk and dawn when the mosquitoes commonly feed.

use screens or mosquito nets over doors, windows and beds.

Pharmacokinetics

After a treatment dose of SP (25 mg sulfadoxine/1.25pyrimethamine per kilogram body weight), plasma concentrations of The antimalarial effect depends on synergy between the two components, but the effect from one treatment dose can last as long as 60 days with fully sensitive P

Any traveler in a malarious area with symptoms of a “flu-like” illness, e.g., fever, muscle pain, nausea, headache, fatigue, chills, and/or sweats, should consider the diagnosis of malaria and seek medical attention immediately. A traveler with these symptoms within several months after returning from an endemic area should also seek medical care and relate travel experiences to the treating physician.

Related Malaria Causes And Symptoms Articles