Understanding Malaria: Global Impact and Challenges

Malaria kills over 3000 children ever-single day 12. This statistic illustrates the tragic outcome that is associated with this devastating disease. In the United States, we fail to completely understand the gravity of Malaria because it is not relevant in our daily lives. The same cannot be said of other nations around the world that are still considered high-risk areas. Sub-Saharan Africa is widely known to bears the greatest mortality rate at the hands of this fatal infection 12. Despite constant efforts to fight malaria, several economic, social, and biological factors have hindered its eradication.

Anopheles Mosquito
There are approximately 3,500 species of mosquitos that are divided into 41 genera. Of the genus Anopheles, females are

A majority of Anopheles mosquito females deliver their bites between the hours of 9pm to 5am as they are nocturnal, which means that they are active at night time. Therefore, most human hosts are infected while they are sleeping. In order to determine the intensity of the transmission several factors have to be accounted for. These factors include things such as the environment, the type of plasmodium parasite, the state of the human host, and the mosquito itself. Rural settings that lack necessary sanitation and water systems have malaria in more abundance. These places mainly use ponds and streams to meet their water necessities. Unfortunately, still bodies of water are ideal grounds for breeding for mosquito larvae. Therefore, malaria transmission is ideal in underdeveloped regions. Two critically important conditions that are vital to the life cycle of both the malaria parasite and the mosquito itself is temperature and the climate. It has been shown that the time it takes for the plasmodium parasite to develop, in the gut of the mosquito, decreases from ten to eight days as the temperature increase from 21oC and 27o