Malaria is a widespread disease that kills many people worldwide. It’s very lethal and easy to spread once you’ve got it. This may seem bad enough, but that’s just the tip of the iceberg since malaria can stay in your body for long periods of time. You and your family are coughing and wheezing before knowing about it. Today, we are going to talk about malaria and why it’s detrimental, where it can be found, how it can stay in your body for a long time, and why the cure actually works.
Malaria is caused by the Plasmodium falciparum parasite. Its name came from plasma since Plasmodium absorbs the liquid from the body. Plasma is the third main thing in your blood other than white and red blood cells. Its 90% percent water and the remaining composition is made up of proteins, enzymes, salts, and hormones. It carries nutrients and collects waste from cells.
Plasmodium can be found nearly everywhere; especially in rural and underdeveloped areas. These places include Africa, parts of South Asia, some islands around the globe, Central America, the Middle East. These places have lots of mosquitoes that spread malaria.
Plasmodium can stay in your body for a long time due to adaptation. During the dry season, when mosquitoes are less common, it’s harder to obtain hosts. They need to keep their current hosts until they find a new one. They stay alive by rewriting their own genetics which allows them to persist and replicate.
The symptoms of Malaria are fever and a flu-like illness, shaking chills, headache, muscle aches, tiredness, nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea, anemia, and in some cases, jaundice. Children are more prone to the lethal symptoms of the disease due to a weak immune system.
Malaria may seem undefeatable, but it has a weak point that the cure can exploit. The parasite needs to multiply and extract resources to satiate its never-ending hunger. To do this, it likes to go to the liver. Mosquiriz, a vaccine against Malaria, prevents it from going there.
Malaria is still present and killing hundreds of people in the world, but due to our ingenious scientists, we have survived one of the deadliest diseases ever conceived.
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