Lack of preventive measures and proper medical facilities by the authorities concerned, poverty and poor sanitary conditions are the main causes of the outbreak of, Plasmodium falciparum, a deadly kind of malaria, which if not promptly treated, may cause kidney failure, seizures, mental confusion, coma, and death. Pakistan Society of Family Physicians Secretary General, Dr Sheharyar Bhatti told Business Recorder here on Saturday that malaria is estimated to cause over 60,000 deaths in Pakistan each year.
There are four kinds of malaria that can infect humans' ie Plasmodium falciparum, Plasmodium vivax, Plasmodium ovale and Plasmodium malaria, he added.
Malaria occurs in over 100 countries and territories while more than 40 percent of the people in the world are at risk. Large areas in Central and South America, Africa, the Indian subcontinent, Southeast Asia and the Middle East are considered malaria-risk areas, Dr Bhatti said.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) estimates that yearly 300-500 million cases of malaria occur and more than 1 million people die of malaria world-wide.
Plasmodium vivax and Plasmodium falciparum and the other forms of malaria are common in the southern part of the country that is southern Punjab and Sindh province, while Plasmodium malaria is reported to exist in northern part of the country, the PSFP secretary general said, adding unchecked travel between Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iran is also causing spread of malaria in border areas, and the number of malaria patients in the border districts of these three countries is increasing mainly due to poverty, lack of education and non-existence of preventive strategies.
Talking about the spread of disease, Dr Bhatti said humans get malaria from the bite of a malaria-infected mosquito. When a mosquito bites an infected person, it ingests microscopic malaria parasites found in the person blood. The malaria parasite must grow in the mosquito for a week or more before infection can be passed to another person. If, after a week, the mosquito then bites another person, the parasites go from the mosquito's mouth into the person's blood. The parasites then travel to the person's liver, enter the liver's cells, grow and multiply.
During this time, he added, when the parasites are in the liver, the person would not yet feel sick. The parasites leave the liver and enter red blood cells (RBCs); this may take as little as 8 days or as many as several months. Once inside the red blood cells, the parasites grow and multiply, the red blood cells burst, freeing the parasites to attack other red blood cells. Toxins from the parasite are also released into the blood, making the person feel sick, Dr Bhatti said.
He stated that the person having malaria would feel fever and flu-like illness, including shaking chills, headache, muscle aches, and tiredness. Vomiting and diarrhea may also occur. Malaria may cause anemia and jaundice because of the loss of RBCs, he stated.
To a question, Dr Bhatti said although people are unaware of the origin of malaria and the mode of transmission, protective measures against the mosquito has been used for hundreds of years.
Systematic control of malaria started after the discovery of malaria parasite by a French army doctor Charles Louis Alphonse Laveran in 1889 (for which he received the Nobel Prize for medicine in 1907), and the demonstration by Sir Ronald Ross (1857-1932) a British scientist in 1897 that the mosquito was the vector of malaria. Ross was also awarded Nobel Prize in 1902.