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DID YOU KNOW?
21 FACTS ABOUT MALARIA
ISSUED BY THE UNIVERSITY OF PRETORIA’S
CENTRE FOR SUSTAINALBLE MALARIA CONTROL
www.malaria.up.ac.za
1. Malaria is a serious and sometimes fatal vector-borne disease. A vector is
something that carries a disease from one living thing to another. The disease
is caused by single celled parasitic protozoans that are transmitted to humans
by Anopheles mosquitoes.
2. It is only the female Anopheles mosquitoes that feed on blood – they need it
for nutrients for optimal development of their eggs. Male mosquitos feed on
fruit or nectar.
3. The mosquito injects an anti-coagulant into the skin – that is what causes the
itching sensation.
4. While the mosquito is feeding, she extracts all the high value nutrients from
the blood – mainly the red blood cells – and excretes the watery fluids (mostly
blood serum).
5. A mosquito can more or less double her weight during a single blood meal.
6. If you can hear a mosquito buzzing, it is not the species that carry malaria.
7. On a map printed by the South African government in 1951, Pretoria,
Rustenburg and Durban are still indicated as malaria risk areas.
8. Mosquitoes can detect carbon dioxide from 23 meters away. Carbon dioxide
is what notifies mosquitoes that a potential blood meal is near.
9. All mosquitoes, including the malaria carrying mosquitoes, need water to
breed.
10. Mosquitoes can fly at speeds between 1.6 and 2.4 kilometres per hour.
11. Malaria is typically found in warmer regions such as tropical and sub-tropical
countries. Higher temperatures enable the Anopheles mosquito to thrive.
Malaria parasites need warmth to develop and grow inside the mosquito,
before mature enough to be transmitted to humans.
12. Large areas of Africa, Southeast Asia, parts of Central and South America,
the Caribbean, the Middle East, and Oceania are considered malaria endemic
areas.
13. Most Anopheles mosquitoes feed at dusk or during the night, but not during
the day.
14. Symptoms of uncomplicated malaria are often mistaken for influenza or
gastro-intestinal infection. These symptoms include; fever, chills, headache,
malaise, fatigue, nausea, minimal vomiting, muscular pains, slight diarrhoea
and slight increase of body temperature.
15. Complicated or severe malaria symptoms include delirium, generalized
convulsions, impaired consciousness and respiratory distress. Patients can
also become anaemic and jaundiced due to the loss of blood cells, start
haemorrhaging, experience renal failure and go into circulatory shock,
followed by persistent coma and death.
16. Malaria is not spread from person to person like a cold or the flu. It is not
sexually transmitted and casual contact with malaria-infected people cannot
infect a person.
17. Most malaria cases occur in people who live in malaria endemic countries.
Other transmission possibilities is when travelling to a malaria area, through a
blood transfusion (very rare), or transmission from an infected mother to her
infant before or during delivery.
18. Symptoms can start anything from 10 days to four weeks after infection;
however, a person may feel ill from as early as seven days up to a year later.
19. Methods to prevent being bitten by any mosquito include; wearing long
sleeved clothes at the times when the mosquitoes feed actively, use repellent
sprays or creams on exposed body parts, cover windows with screens to stop
mosquitoes from entering home, sleep under bed nets, ensure that there are
no stagnant pools or puddles of water near your home for mosquitoes to
breed in.
20. In 2012 there were 207 million malaria cases worldwide with 627,000 deaths.
21. Of all the malaria-related deaths in 2012, 90% occurred in sub-Saharan Africa
of which 77% were in children younger than 5 years of age.