The Causes of Malaria and Treatment Options

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Did you know that every 30 seconds a child who is infected with Malaria dies? (Malaria, World Health Organization) Over 20% of the world population is at risk at getting Malaria each day? If you want a better idea on what 20% of the world population is, it’s over 1.3 billion people. Hundreds of millions of people are infected with Malaria right now, and it can lead to millions of deaths each year. (Malaria: Past and Present) However you cannot get this disease in certain places. Some of the countries such as Australia and North America are some of the areas you cannot get Malaria in, unless you travel to areas that have Malaria and come back infected. Malaria is also not found in areas that have cold climates. Even if you live in one of these places, it doesn’t mean that you’re not at risk at getting Malaria. Traveling to South America or Africa can put you at risk, because if a mosquito bites you and it’s already previously bitten a person that’s infected with Malaria, you could definitely get it. However you might ask, what causes Malaria? (Malaria, 1120-1123, Encyclopedia Of Family Health)

Well what causes Malaria is that there’s this group of parasites called plasmodia. For plasmodia to survive, it must depend on the organism since they need to feed on the organism to stay alive. However there’s not just one species of it, there’s four different types of species of this parasite that causes Malaria in humans. The name of the four different species of parasite is Plasmodium falciparum, P. vivax, P. ovale, and P. malariae. These are the only four species of parasites that infect humans; it does not affect anything else. Out of these four species that causes Malaria in human beings, there is one that is the most deadly. P. falc...

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...ff everything else, it basically tries to clear most of the parasites out and anything infected so the body can restore balance again. The cells of the body will start to slowly increase again, trying to restore what is missing. So the amount of red blood cells will start to recover and the amount of liver cells will start to recover too. The cells will continue to do their own thing that they’re supposed to do.

The prognosis with the treatment really depends on what strand of parasites you have. It also depends if the body is resistant to it or has some sort of immunity towards it. But without treatment, chances of probably still living would probably be about 30-40%. If you have effective treatment, then the chances are much lower, but it would be about 90% or more. So chances of still dying from Malaria are still possible. (Malaria, World Health Organization)

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