Transcription

A year later, Carlos Finlay, a Cuban doctor treating patients with yellow fever in Havana, provided strong evidence that mosquitoes were transmitting disease to and from humans. The first effective treatment for malaria came from the bark of cinchona tree, which contains quinine. This tree grows on the slopes of the Andes, mainly in Peru. A tincture made of this natural product was used by the inhabitants of Peru to control malaria, and the Jesuits introduced this practice to Europe during the 1640s, where it was rapidly accepted.

When a mosquito bites an infected person, a small amount of blood is taken, which contains microscopic malaria parasites. About one week later, when the mosquito takes its next blood meal, these parasites mix with the mosquito's saliva and are injected into the person being bitten.

Infected Anopheles mosquitoes carry Plasmodium sporozoites in their salivary glands. When it bites a person the sporozoites goes through the blood and arrives to the liver where it enters into hepatic cells and starts to reproduce. Then the new cells travel to the blood and blow up the red blood cells.
Malaria transmission can be reduced by preventing mosquito bites with mosquito nets and insect repellents, or by mosquito control measures such as spraying insecticides inside houses.

Work has been done on malaria vaccines with limited success and more exotic controls, such as genetic manipulation of mosquitoes to make them resistant to the parasite have also been considered.
Education in recognizing the symptoms of malaria has reduced the number of cases in some areas of the developing world by as much as 20%.Education can also inform people to cover over areas of still water which are ideal breeding grounds for the parasite and mosquito.